The book
OF
Trinity College

DUBLIN

1591

1891

BELFAST

MARCUS WARD & CO., LIMITED, ROYAL ULSTER WORKS

LONDON AND NEW YORK

DUBLIN: HODGES, FIGGIS & CO., LIMITED

1892

The Committee appointed by the Provost and Senior Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, to make arrangements for the celebration of the Tercentenary of the Foundation of the University of Dublin and of Trinity College, to be held in July, 1892, requested the following to act as a Sub-Committee to superintend the bringing out of a volume in which there should be a record of the chief events of the College for the last three centuries, a description of its buildings, &c.:—

Rev. John W. Stubbs, D.D.
Rev. Thomas K. Abbott, B.D., Litt.D., Librarian.
Rev. John P. Mahaffy, D.D., Mus. Doc.
Edward Dowden, LL.D., Litt.D.
Ulick Ralph Burke, M.A.
William MacNeile Dixon, LL.B., and
E. Perceval Wright, M.A., M.D.;

the last named to be the Convener.

Through illness, Professor E. Dowden was unable to take any active part in the preparation of this volume, the publication of which was undertaken by the firm of Messrs. Marcus Ward & Co., Limited, of Belfast. The time at the disposal of the writers of the following chapters was extremely short, and they tender an apology for the want of completeness, which, on an exact scrutiny of their work, will, they fear, be only too conspicuous; but it is hoped that the volume may be acceptable as a sketch towards a History of the College.

The name of the writer of each chapter is given in the Table of Contents, and each author is to be regarded as accountable only for his own share of the work. The Committee’s grateful thanks are due to Mr. Louis Fagan, of the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, for the help he has given them in having reproductions made from rare engravings of some of the distinguished Graduates of the University.

[Pg 1]

The origin of the University of Dublin is not shrouded in darkness, as are the origins of the Universities of Bologna and Oxford. The details of the foundation are well known, in the clear light of Elizabethan times; the names of the promoters and benefactors are on record; and yet when we come to examine the dates current in the histories of the University and the relative merits of the promoters, there arise many perplexities. The grant of the Charter is in the name of Queen Elizabeth, and we record every day in the College our gratitude for her benefaction; but it is no secret that she was urged to this step by a series of advisers, of whom the most important and persuasive remained in the background.

[2]

The project of founding a University in Ireland had long been contemplated, and the current histories record various attempts, as old as 1311, to accomplish this end—attempts which all failed promptly, and produced no effect upon the country, unless it were to afford to the Roman Catholic prelates, who petitioned James II. to hand over Trinity College to their control, some colour for their astonishing preamble.[2] It is not the province of these chapters to narrate or discuss these earlier schemes. One feature they certainly possessed—the very feature denied them in the petition just named. Most of them were essentially ecclesiastical, and closely attached to the Cathedral corporations. There seems never to have been a secular teacher appointed in any of them—not to speak of mere frameworks, like that of the University of Drogheda. Another feature also they all present: they are without any reasonable endowment, the only serious offer being that of Sir John Perrott in 1585, who proposed the still current method of exhibiting English benevolence towards Ireland by robbing one Irish body to endow another. In this case, S. Patrick’s Cathedral, “because it was held in superstitious reverence by the people,” was to be plundered of its revenues to set up two Colleges—one in Armagh and one in Limerick. This plan was thwarted, not only by the downfall of its originator (Perrott), but by the active opposition of an eminent Churchman—Adam Loftus, the Archbishop of Dublin. The violent mutual hostility of these two men may have stimulated each to promote a public object disadvantageous to the other. Perrott urged the disendowment of S. Patrick’s because he knew that the Archbishop had retained a large pecuniary interest in it. Perhaps Loftus promoted a rival plan because he feared some future revival of Perrott’s scheme. Both attest their bitter feelings: for in his defence upon his trial Perrott calls the Archbishop his deadly enemy; and Loftus, in the Latin speech made in Trinity College when he resigned the Provostship, takes special credit for having resisted the overbearing fury of Perrott, and having gained for Leinster the College which the other sought to establish either in Armagh or Limerick, exposed to the dangers of rebellion and devastation.[3] But before this audience, who knew the circumstances, he does not[3] make any claim to have been the original promoter of the foundation. Even in his defence of S. Patrick’s, he had a supporter perhaps more persuasive, because he was more respected. It is mentioned in praise of Henry Ussher, “he so lucidly and with such strength of arguments defended the rights of S. Patrick’s Church, which Perrott meant to turn into a College, that he averted that dire omen.”[4] Nevertheless, the Archbishop is generally credited with being the real founder of Trinity College, and indeed his speeches to the citizens of Dublin, of which two are still extant, might lead to that conclusion. But other and more potent influences were at work.

Some years before, Case, in the preface to his Speculum Moralium Quæstionum (1585), had addressed the Chancellors of Cambridge and Oxford conjointly on the crying want of a proper University, to subdue the turbulence and barbarism of the Irish. This appeal was not original, or isolated, or out of sympathy with the age. Such laymen as Spencer, and as Bryskett, Spencer’s host near Dublin, must have long urged similar arguments. In 1547, Archbishop George Browne had forwarded to Sir William Cecil a scheme for establishing a College with the revenues of the then recently suppressed S. Patrick’s.[5] Another scheme is extant, endorsed by Cecil, dated October, 1563, with salaries named, but not the source of the endowment. In 1571, John Ussher, in applying for the rights of staple at the port of Dublin, says in his petition that he intends to leave his fortune to found a College in Dublin. In 1584, the Rev. R. Draper petitions Burghley to have the University founded at Trim, in the centre of the Pale, as this site possessed a waterway to Drogheda, and was furnished with great ancient buildings, then deserted, and falling into decay.

But in addition to these appeals of sentiment, there were practical men at work. Two successive Deputies, Sir Henry Sidney and Sir John Perrott, had urged the necessity of some such foundation (1565, 1585), and the former had even offered pecuniary aid. The Queen, long urged in this direction, had ultimately been persuaded, as appears[4] from her Warrant, that the City of Dublin was prepared to grant a site, and help in building the proposed College; and the City, no doubt, had been equally persuaded that the Queen would endow the site. The practical workers in this diplomacy have been set down in history as Cambridge men. This is one of those true statements which disguise the truth. The real agitators in the matter were Luke Challoner and Henry Ussher. A glance at Mr. Gilbert’s Assembly Rolls of the City of Dublin the reign of Elizabeth will show how both family names occur perpetually in the Corporation as mayors, aldermen, etc.[6] The very site of the future College had been let upon lease to a Challoner and to the uncle of an Ussher.[7] These were the influential City families which swayed the Corporation. Henry Ussher,[8] who had become Archdeacon of Dublin, went as emissary to Court; Challoner[9] superintended the gathering of funds and the laying out of the site, which his family had rented years before. It was therefore by Dublin men—by citizens whose sons had merely been educated at Cambridge, and had learned there to appreciate University culture—that Trinity College was really founded. They had learned to compare Cambridge and Oxford, with Dublin, life, and when they came home to their paternal city, they felt the wide difference.

Queen Elizabeth, in her Warrant, puts the case quite differently. She does not, indeed, make the smallest mention of Loftus, but of the prayer of the City of Dublin, preferred by Henry Ussher, thus:

The Usshers and the Challoners had no inclination to go to Spain or France, nor is it likely that they ever thought they would prevent the Irish Catholic priesthood from favouring this foreign education. They desired to ennoble their city by giving it a College similar to those of Oxford and Cambridge, and they succeeded.

The extant speech of Adam Loftus, to which I have already referred, makes no allusion to these things. His argument is homely enough. Guarding himself from preaching the doctrine of good works, which would have a Papistical complexion, he urges the Mayor and Corporation to consider how the trades had suffered by the abolition of the monasteries, under the previous Sovereign; how the city of Oxford and town of Cambridge have flourished owing to their Colleges; how the prosperity of Dublin, now depending on the presence of the Lord Deputy and his retinue and the Inns of Court, will be increased by a College, which would bring strangers, and with them money, to the citizens. Thus it will be a means of civilising the nation and enriching the city, and will enable many of their children to work their own advancement, “and in order thereto ye will be pleased to call a Common Council and deliberate thereon, having first informed the several Masters of every Company of the pregnant likelihood of advantage,” etc. Again, “it is my hearty desire that you would express your and the City’s thankfulness to Her Majesty,” etc.

This harangue, in which “our good Lord the Archbushopp” gives himself the whole credit of the transaction, is said to have been delivered “soon after the Quarter Sessions of St. John the Baptist”—viz., about July, but in what year I cannot discover. Mr. Gilbert says, “after Easter, in the year 1590.” In Loftus’ Latin speech occurs—“As soon as I had proposed it to the Mayor and Sheriffs, without any delay they assembled in full conclave and voted the whole site of the monastery.” But in the meetings of the Dublin Council there is no allusion whatever to this speech, no thanks to the Queen, no resolution on the matter whatever, till under the date “Fourth Friday after December, 1590” (33 Elizabeth), we find the following modest business entry:—“Forasmoch as there is in this Assembly by certayne well-disposed persons petition[6] preferred,[11] declaring many good and effectual persuacions to move our furtherance for setting upp and erecting a Collage for the bringing upp of yeouth to learning, whereof we, having a good lyking, do, so farr as in us lyeth, herby agree and order that the scite of Alhallowes and the parkes thereof shalbe wholly gyven for the erection of a Collage there; and withall we require that we may have conference with the preferrers of the said peticion to conclude how the same shalbe fynished.”[12] The Queen’s Warrant is signed the 29th December, 1592 (34 Elizabeth).[13] It is hard to find any logical place for the Archbishop’s speech, either before, between, or after these dates and documents.

At all events, the Queen gave a Warrant and Charter, some small Crown rents on various estates in the South and West of Ireland, and presently, upon further petition, a yearly gift of nearly £400 from the Concordatum Fund, which latter the College enjoyed till the present century, when it was resumed by the Government. From the Elizabethan Crown rents the College now derives about £5 per annum. The Charter was surrendered for that of Charles I.

Thus the benevolences of Elizabeth, like the buildings of her foundation, have dwindled away and disappeared.

The Archbishop’s sounding words have had their weight in benefiting his own memory, as has been shown, beyond his merits in this matter.

The modest gift of the Corporation of Dublin, consisting of 28 acres of derelict land[7] partly invaded by the sea, has become a splendid property, in money value not less than £10,000 a-year, in convenience and in dignity to the College perfectly inestimable.

The necessary sum for repairing the decayed Abbey of All Hallowes, and for what new buildings the College required, was raised by an appeal of the Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam (dated March 11, 1591) to the owners of landed property all over Ireland. The list of these contributions is very curious, and also very liberal, if we consider that the following sums represent perhaps eight times as much in modern days:—

The coldness of Limerick—perhaps disappointed at the failure of Perrott’s scheme—contrasted with the zeal of Dublin. Dr. Stubbs quotes from Fuller, the Church historian, a statement which the latter had heard from credible persons then resident in Dublin, that during the building of the College—that is to say, for over a year—it never rained, except at night. This historically incredible statement is of real value in showing the feelings of the people who were persuaded of it. The great interest and keen hopes of the city in the founding of the College are expressed in this legendary way.

Thus by the earnestness and activity of some leading citizens of Dublin, supported by[9] the voice of educated opinion in Cambridge, the eloquence of the Archbishop, and the sound policy of Queen Elizabeth’s advisers, Trinity College was founded. The foundation-stone was laid by the Mayor of Dublin, Thomas Smith, and for at least 150 years the liberality of the Corporation of Dublin was commemorated in our prayers.

“We give Thee thanks for the Most Serene Princess Elizabeth, our most illustrious Foundress; for King James and King Charles, our most munificent Benefactors, and for our present Sovereign, our Most Gracious Conservator and Benefactor; for the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, together with his brethren, the Aldermen, and the whole assembly of the citizens of Dublin, and all our other benefactors, through whose Bounty we are here maintained for the exercise of Piety and the increase of Learning,” etc.[15]

[10]

Such being the true history of the foundation of Trinity College, as the mother of an University, to be a Corporation with a common seal, it was natural that upon that seal the Corporation should assume a device implying its connection with Dublin. Accordingly, though there is no formal record of the granting of arms to the College, the present arms, showing it to be a place of learning, Royal and Irish, add the Castle of the Seal of the Corporation of Dublin. Dr. Stubbs quotes (note, p. 320) a description of it in Latin elegiacs, of which the arx ignita—towers fired proper—are a modification of the Dublin arms,[16] which I have found on illuminated rolls of the age of Charles I. preserved by the City. But this description is undated, and although he ascribes it to the early years of the 17th century, it will be hard to prove it older than the seal extant in clear impressions, which bears the date 1612 above the shield, and upon it the towers, not fired, but domed and flagged. This date may even imply that the arms were then granted, and that it is the original form.[17] The[11] recurrence of the domes and flags upon some of our earliest plate (dated 1666) gives additional authority for this feature, nor have we any distinct or dated evidence for the fired towers, adopted in the 17th century by the City also, earlier than the time of Charles II., when they are given in a Heraldic MS. preserved in the Bermingham Tower. I have digressed into this antiquarian matter in proof of my opening assertion that the details of the foundation are often obscure, while the main facts are perfectly clear.

[12]

Let us now turn from our new-founded College to cast a glance at the City of Dublin of that day, as it is described to us by Elizabethan eye-witnesses, and as we can gather its features from the early records of the City and the College. Mr. Gilbert has quoted from Stanihurst’s account of Dublin, published in 1577, a curious picture of the wealth and hospitality displayed by the several Mayors and great citizens of his acquaintance; and that the Mayoralty was indeed a heavy tax upon the citizen who held it, appears from the numerous applications of Mayors, recorded in the City registers, for assistance, and the frequent voting of subsidies of £100, though care is taken to warn the citizens that this is to establish no precedent. The City is described as very pleasant to live in, placed in an exceptionally beautiful valley, with sea, rivers, and mountains around. Wealthy and civilised as it was, it would have been much more so, but that the port was open, and the river full of shoals, and that by the management of the citizen merchants a great mart of foreign traders, which used to assemble outside the gates and undersell them, had been abolished. The somewhat highly-coloured picture drawn by Stanihurst is severely criticised by Barnabe Rich,[18] who gives a very different account, telling us that the architecture was mean, and the whole City one mass of taverns, wherein was retailed at an enormous price, ale, which was brewed by the richer citizens’ wives. The moral character of the retailers is described as infamous. This liquor traffic, and the extortion of the bakers, are, to Rich, the main features in Dublin. The Corporation records show orders concerning the keeping of the pavements, the preserving of the purity of the water-supply, which came from Tallaght, and the cleansing of the streets from filth and refuse thrown out of the houses. These orders alternate with regulations to control the beggars and the swine which swarmed in the streets. Furthermore, says Stanihurst—“There are so manie other extraordinarie beggars that dailie swarme there, so charitablie succored, as that they make the whole civitie in effect their hospitall.” There was a special officer, the City beadle, entitled “master” or “warden” of the beggars, and “custos” or “overseer” of the swine, whose duty it was to banish strange beggars from the City, and keep the swine from running about the streets.[19]

In one of the orders relating to this subject, dated the 4th Friday after 25th December, 1601, we find the following:—“Wher[as] peticion is exhibitid by the commons, complaineing that the auncient lawes made, debarring of swyne coming in or goeing in the streetes of this[13] cittie, is not put in execution, by reyson whearof great danger groweth therby, as well for infection, as also the poore infantes lieing under stales and in the streetes subject to swyne, being a cattell much given to ravening, as well of creatures as of other thinges, and alsoe the cittie and government therof hardlie spoken of by the State, wherin they requirid a reformacion: it is therfore orderid and establyshid, by the aucthoritie of this assemblie, that yf eny sowe, hogge, or pigge shalbe found or sene, ether by daie or nyght, in the streetes within the cittie walles, it shalbe lawfull for everye man to kill the same sowe, hogge, or pigge, and after to dispose the same at his or their disposition, without making recompence to such as owneth the same.”

Thus this present characteristic of the country parts of Ireland then infected the capital. I have quoted the text of the order for reasons which will presently appear.

The City walls, with their many towers, and protected by a fosse, enclosed but a small area of what we consider Old Dublin. S. Patrick’s and its Liberty, under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop, who lived in the old Palace (S. Sepulchre’s) beside that Cathedral, was still outside the walls, which excluded even most of Patrick Street, and was apparently defended by ramparts of its own. Thomas Street was still a suburb, and lined with thatched houses, for we find an order (1610) that henceforth, owing to the danger of fire[20] in the suburbs, in S. Thomas Street, S. Francis Street, in Oxmantown, or in S. Patrick Street, “noe house which shall from hensforth be built shalbe covered with thach, but either with slate, tyle, shingle, or boord, upon paine of x.li. current money of England.” We may therefore imagine these suburbs as somewhat similar to those of Galway in the present day, where long streets of thatched cabins lead up to the town. Such I take to have been the row of houses outside Dame’s Gate, the eastern gate of the city, which is marked on the map of 1610. They only occupy the north side of the way, and for a short distance. There had long been a public way to Hogging or Hoggen Green, one of the three commons of the City, and the condition of this exit from Dublin may be inferred from an order made in 1571, which the reader will find below.[21]

The reader will not object to have some more details about the state of this College[14] Green, now the very heart of the City, in the days when the College was founded. In 1576 the great garden and gate of the deserted Monastery of All Hallowes was ordered to be allotted for the reception of the infected, and the outer gate of All Hallowes to be repaired and locked. In the next year (and again in 1603), it is ordered that none but citizens shall pasture their cattle on this and the other greens. It is ordered in 1585 that no unringed swine shall be allowed to feed upon the Green, being noisome and hurtful, and “coming on the strand greatly hinder thincrease of the fyshe;” the tenant of All Hallowes, one Peppard, shall impound or kill them, and allow no flax to be put into the ditches, “for avoyding the hurte to thincrease of fyshe.” In the same year the use and keeping of the Green is leased for seven years to Mr. Nicholas Fitzsymons, to the end the walking places may be kept clean, and no swyne or forren cattle allowed to injure them. In 1602 Sir George Carye is granted a part of the Green to build a Hospital, and presently Dr. Challoner and others are granted another to build a Bridewell; and this is marked on the map of 1610, near the site of the present S. Andrew’s Church.[22]

This is our evidence concerning the ground between the College and the City—an interval which might well make the founders speak of the former as juxta Dublin. It was a place unoccupied between the present Castle and College gates, with the exception of a row of cottages, probably thatched, forming a short row at the west end and north side of Dame Street, and under that name; opposite to this was the ruined church of S. Andrew. On the Green were pigs and cattle grazing; refuse of various kinds was cast out in front of the houses of Dame Street, despite the Corporation order; a little stream crossed this space close to the present College gate, and the only two buildings close at hand, when the student looked out of his window or over the wall, were a hospital for the infected, by the river, and a bridewell on his way to the City.

Further off, the view was interesting enough. The walled City, with its gates, crowned the hill of Christ Church, and the four towers of the Castle were plainly visible. A gate, over a fosse, led into the City, where first of all there lay on the left hand the Castle entrance, with the ghastly heads of great rebels still exposed on high poles. Here the Lord Deputy and his men-at-arms kept their state, and hither the loyal gentry from the country came to express their devotion and obtain favours from the Crown. In the far distance to the south lay the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, not as they now are, a[15] delightful excursion for the student on his holiday, but the home of those wild Irish whose raids up to the City walls were commemorated by the feast of Black Monday at Cullenswood, whither the citizens went well guarded, and caroused, to assert themselves against the natives who had once surprised and massacred 500 of them close to that wood. The river, the sea, and the Hill of Howth, held by the Baron of Howth in his Castle, closed the view to the east. The upland slopes to the north were near no wild country, and therefore Oxmantown and S. Mary’s Abbey were already settled on the other bank of the river.

We must remember also, as regards the civilisation of Dublin, that though the streets swarmed not only with beggars and swine, but with rude strangers from the far country, yet the wealthy citizens were not only rich and hospitable, but advanced enough to send their sons to Cambridge. This is proved by the Usshers and Challoners, and we may be sure these were not solitary cases. As regards education, there are free schools and grammar schools constantly mentioned in the records of the time. It is well known that one Fullerton, a very competent Scotchman, was sent over by James VI. of Scotland to promote that King’s interests, and that he had a Hamilton for his assistant, who afterwards got great grants of land for himself, as Lord Clandeboye, and also obtained for the College those Crown rents which resulted in producing its great wealth. Fullerton, a learned man, was ultimately placed in the King’s household. Both were early nominated lay Fellows of the College. These were people of education who understood how to teach.

But most probably the great want in Dublin was the want of books. There must have been a very widespread complaint of this, when it occurred to the army which had defeated the Spaniards at Kinsale (in 1601) to give a large sum from their spoil for books to endow the new College.[23] This sent the famous James Ussher to search for books in England, and laid the foundation for that splendid collection of which the Archbishop’s own books formed the next great increase, obtained by the new military donation of Cromwell’s soldiers in 1654. There is probably no other so great library in the world endowed by the repeated liberality of soldiers. Still we hear that, even after the founding of the collection, James Ussher thought it necessary to go every third year to England, and to spend in reading a month at Oxford, a month at Cambridge, and a month in London, for the purpose of adding to that mass of his learning which most of us would think already excessive. Yet it is a pity[16] that smaller men, in more recent days, did not follow his example, and so save the College from that provincialism with which it was infected even in our own recollection.

Let us now turn to the internal history of the College. The great crises in the first century of its existence were the Rebellion under Charles I. and the civil war under James II., ending with the Settlements by which Charles II. and William III. secured the future greatness of the Institution. This brief sketch cannot enter into details, especially into the tedious internal quarrels of the Provost and Fellows; we are only concerned with the general character of the place, its religion, its morals, and its intellectual tendencies. Upon all these questions we have hitherto rather been put off with details than with a philosophical survey of what the College accomplished.

It has been well insisted on by Mr. Heron, the Roman Catholic historian of Trinity College, that the Charter of Elizabeth is neither exclusive nor bigoted as regards creed. Religion, civility, and learning are the objects to be promoted, and it is notorious that the great Queen’s policy, as regards the first, was to insist upon outward conformity with the State religion without further inquisition. A considerable number of the Corporation which endowed the new College were Roman Catholics, and we know that even the Usshers had near relations of that creed. There was no insistence that the Fellows should take orders—we know that Provost Temple, and Fullerton and Hamilton, among the earliest Fellows, were laymen,—and though in very early days the degree of Doctor conferred was apparently always that in Theology, the Charter provides for all the Faculties, and it was soon felt that Theology and the training of clergy were becoming too exclusively the work of the place. The constant advices from Chancellors and from other advisers to give special advantages to the natives, and the repeated attempts to teach the Irish language, and through its medium to educate the Irish, show plainly that they understood Elizabeth’s foundation as intended for the whole country, and more especially for those of doubtful loyalty in their creed, who were tempted to go abroad for their education.

“A certain illustrious Baron,” says Father Fitz-Simons, writing in 1603, “whose lady, my principal benefactress, sent his son to Trinity College. Notwithstanding my obligations to them for my support, I, with the utmost freedom, earnestness, and severity, informed and taught them, that it was a most impious thing, and a detestable scandal, to expose their child to such education. The boy was taken away at once, and so were others, after that good example. The College authorities are greatly enraged at this, as they had never before attracted any [Roman Catholic] pupil of respectability, and do not now hope to get any for[17] the future. Hence I must be prepared for all the persecution which their impiety and hatred can bring down upon me.”[24]

On the other hand, the early Provosts imported from Cambridge, Travers, Alvey, Temple, were men who were baulked in their English promotion by their acknowledged Puritanism—a school created or promoted by that desperate bigot Cartwright, who preached the most violent Genevan doctrines from his Chair of Divinity in Cambridge. But these men, who certainly were second to none in the intolerance of their principles, were themselves in danger of persecution from the Episcopal party in England. Complaints were urged against Temple for neglecting to wear a surplice in Chapel—a great stumbling-block in those days; the Puritanism of the College was openly assailed, so that its Governors were rather occupied in defending themselves than in attacking the creed of others. Any sect which is in danger of persecution is compelled so far to advocate toleration; we may be sure that the Irish Fellows who lived among Catholics in a Catholic nation curbed any excessive zeal on the part of the Puritan Provosts; and so we find that they did not scruple to admit natives whom they suspected, or even knew, to be Papists. Moreover, the Fellows and their Provost were very busy in constitution-mongering. They had the power by Charter of making and altering statutes—a source of perpetual dispute; and, besides, the Plantation of Ulster by James I. in 1610 gave them their first large estates, which were secured to them by the influence of Fullerton and Hamilton, already mentioned as Scottish agents of the King. Provost Temple spent most of his time either in framing statutes or in quarrelling about leases with his Fellows.

A review of the various documents still extant concerning these quarrels shows that the first of the lay Provosts was not inferior in importance to his two successors in the eighteenth century, and that in his day all the main problems which have since agitated the Corporation were raised and discussed.

In the first place we may name the distinction between University and College, one often attempted by theorists, and which may any day become of serious importance if a new College were founded under the University, but one which has practically had no influence in the history of Trinity College. We even find such hybrid titles as Fellow of the University, and Professor of the College, used by people who ought to have known the impropriety.[25] Temple, with the[18] consent of his Fellows, sought to obtain a separate Charter for a University, and drew up, for this and the College, Statutes which Dr. Stubbs has quoted.

The second point in Temple’s policy was an innovation which took root, and transformed the whole history of the College. It was the distinction of Senior and junior Fellows, not merely into separate classes as regards salary and duties, but into Governors and subjects. It was rightly felt that, after some years’ constant lecturing, the Fellows who still adhered to the College should have leisure for their studies, and for literary work, as well as a better income, in reward of their services. But when Temple made a College Statute that the Seniors should govern not only the scholars and ordinary students, but also the Junior Fellows and Probationers (which last correspond somewhat to our present Non-Tutor Fellows), he soon came into conflict with the Charter, which gave many privileges—the election, for example, of the Provost—to all the Fellows without distinction; and on this question arose a great dispute immediately on Temple’s death, there being actually two Provosts elected—one (Mede) by the Seniors, the other (R. Ussher) by the Juniors. Bedell was only elected by a compromise between the two parties, with distinct protests on the part of the Juniors.[26] The Caroline Statutes finally decided the matter, and gave the whole control to the Seniors.

Whether this great change, introduced by Temple, and certainly promoted by Ussher, has been a benefit or an injury to the College, is a question not easy to answer. There is no doubt that a small body, such as the Governing Board of Provost and Senior Fellows, is far more likely to carry out a consistent policy, and even to decide promptly, where discussion and divergence of opinion among a larger number cause delay and paralyse action. But, on the other hand, the concentration of power into the hands of a small and irremovable body sets temptations before its members to look after their own interests unduly, and cumulate upon themselves offices and emoluments to the damage of the Corporation.

The reservation of a large number of offices to the Senior Fellows, and the consequent appointment, occasionally, of incompetent persons to discharge important duties, were the necessary result of such an arrangement, and might be of great injury to the Corporation. It might even result in the trafficking in offices, or in acts of distinct injustice towards the other members of the Corporation, which could not have been committed had the acts of[19] the Governing Body been subject to the public criticism and control of the whole body of Fellows.

On the other hand, as some working Committee must be selected to administer the affairs of the College, nothing was more obvious to Temple or to Ussher than that those who had been Fellows for eight or ten years should be preferred to those who had just entered the Corporation. In a body, however, of celibates, with many good livings and other promotions around them, it never occurred to the framers of the Statute that new circumstances would arise which made a Fellowship practically a life office, and thus placed the government in the hands of a group of men, of whom many were disabled by age, and, moreover, distracted by family cares. We should not stare with more wonder at a Vice-Provost of 40, than would Ussher have stared at a Junior Fellow of 40 years’ standing. Had such things been even dimly foreseen, it would have been easy to avoid the danger of accumulating emolument and office upon incompetent persons by making the Governing Body elective from the whole Corporation.

The third question which arose in Provost Temple’s day was the proper leasing of the College estates. The tendency to take present profit at the expense of our successors, or to postpone the interests of the abstract Corporation to the claims of private friendship, is nowhere more conspicuous than in the document Dr. Stubbs has printed (p. 32), in which the Provost, and two Senior Fellows, the greatest names at the foundation, and the most attached friends of the College, James Ussher and Luke Challoner, actually consent to lease for ever all the Ulster estates to Sir James Hamilton, their old personal friend and colleague, who had helped the College to obtain these lands from the King. Had the earnest endeavours of these two excellent Senior Fellows been carried out, the College would not have owned nearly so many hundreds, as it now owns thousands, in Ulster. This calamity was only averted by the active interference of the Junior Fellows, who obtained an order from the State forbidding the Board to give perpetual leases. Nevertheless, so long as the Senior Fellows divided the renewal fines, there was constant danger of the rents of the College being cut down, and the incomes of the lessors being increased: it redounds to the credit of this “Venetian Council” that, after such vast opportunities of plundering public property, only some few cases of breach of public trust can be asserted against them. One of the most manifest attempts has been just noticed. Another was partly carried through by Temple. He obtained a lease, and appointed his son Seneschal of the Manor of Slutmulrooney—a delightful title, but also a solid estate, which he evidently coveted for a family property.[27]

[20]

We turn with satisfaction from such things to the two great names in the College and the Irish Church which mark that period—Bedell and James Ussher.

It was by rare good fortune that the nascent College secured such a student as James Ussher. He must have made a name in any case; yet the world is so apt to judge any system not by the average outcome, but by the best and worst, that one such name was at that moment of the last importance. He was the first great home growth, and, though he refused the Provostship, he was so closely connected with the College as Fellow, Lecturer in Divinity, as Vice-Provost and as Vice-Chancellor, that no one has ever thought of denying him and his fame to the College. His works and character will be discussed in another chapter. What I am concerned with is his attitude in the great ecclesiastical quarrels of the day. It was no easy course to steer the Church of Ireland between the “Scylla of Puritanism” and the “Charybdis of Popery.” Ussher well knew that both were dangerous enemies. In his youth, owing to his daily contact with Roman Catholic relatives, with Jesuit controversialists, with the temporising policy of King James, who offered further stages of toleration in return for subsidies of money from the Irish Catholics, he was strong against the danger on that side, and protested with prophetic wisdom that such concessions would lead to rebellion and ruin in Ireland. In his old age, when living constantly, either from his public importance or his persecutions, in England, when witnessing and suffering from the outrages of the English Revolution, he said in a conversation with Evelyn, “that the Church would be destroyed by sectaries who would in all likelihood bring in Popery.” The personal complexion of his religion, his constant preaching, his great liberality and good feeling towards pious Dissenting ministers, show that he was a strong Protestant, and he always showed the strongest apprehension of the ambitious policy of the Romish priesthood, which he feared as a pressing danger; but, nevertheless, he was so loyal a Churchman, that he was content to overlook many abuses in the system which he administered.

It was this temper, so common in the Anglo-Irish Protestant, which separates him in his policy from his eminent and amiable contemporary, Bishop Bedell. But the latter was a stranger brought over from England to be Provost, who, with all the generosity and all the kindliness of his noble nature, set himself to instruct the native Irish, and to work out the regeneration of these barbarians by teaching them religion through the Irish language. So sterling and single-hearted was the Bishop, that even the excited rebels of 1641, amid their rapine and massacre, spared and respected the excellent old man, and at his death honoured him with a great public funeral. But it is plain from Primate Ussher’s dealings with him that this policy of persuading the natives was not to the Primate’s taste. Ussher probably believed that there[21] were serious dangers in the policy of reclaiming the natives through kindness, and their priests through persuasion; and if the historians note it as curious that, of all those who ruled the College, those by far the most anxious to promote Irish studies were two Englishmen,[28] Bedell and Marsh, it will be replied by many in Ireland, that this contrast between the views of the English stranger, and of the English settler who knows the country, is still perpetuated.

Such, then, was the attitude of the early rulers of the College, and such their controversies. All of them that were not complete Puritans felt what Provost Chappel says in his autobiographical (iambic) poem—Ruunt agmine facto in me profana turba Roma Genevaque. But from the very commencement the College was Puritanical enough to save it from Ecclesiasticism. There is therefore nothing strange in the habit of making lay Fellows read short sermons (commonplaces) in the Chapel as part of their duty—a practice only abandoned within the memory of our seniors in this century.[29]

We turn to the few and meagre traditions concerning the moral condition and conduct of the students. It must be remembered that they came up at a very early age—12 to 14 years old are often mentioned—and were only supposed to be partly educated when they took their B.A. degree. There were special exercises and lectures for three years more, and only with the M.A. were they properly qualified. We may, indeed, be sure that the post-graduate studies were far the more important for the serious section of the lads. For they came up very raw and ignorant; they even had a special schoolmaster to teach them the elements of Latin and Greek, and of course the books they could command were both few and imperfect as educational helps. I do not think that from the first the College was at all abandoned to the poor or inferior classes. The very earliest lists of names contain those of the most respectable citizens; there were often favourite pupils of a Provost, or other Don, who came from England, brought over with their teacher. Very soon the Irish nobility began to send their sons. The Court of Wards, established by King James I. in 1617, ordered that the minors of important families in Ireland should be maintained and educated in English habits, and in Trinity College, Dublin; and the first instance of this kind is that of Farrall O’Gara, heir to Moy Gara, County Sligo, who was to remain at the College from his 12th to his 18th year. By this means many youths of quality, or at least of important family, were enrolled among the students. The Earl of Cork sent[22] two sons in 1630; the famous Strafford two in 1637; and we find Radcliffes, Wandesfords, and other aristocratic names. What strikes us in the face of this is the extreme economy—or rather the apparently very small prices mentioned in the various early accounts printed by Dr. Stubbs from the Bursar’s books.[30]

This economy, however, only applies to the scholars supported by the House, especially the natives, who had various privileges. Fellow-Commoners, and Nobles, such as Strafford’s sons, were probably allowed various indulgences. It is interesting to notice that from the first a certain proportion of lads came, as they now do, from the counties of England (especially Cheshire) nearest to Dublin. On the other hand, while natives are carefully distinguished from lads born in Ireland, I cannot find what test was applied to determine a “native.” Even in 1613, 20 out of the 65 students are so denominated. The majority of the natives, says Archbishop Marsh two generations later, had been born of English parents, and were mostly of the meaner sort, but by having learned to speak Irish with their Irish nurses, or fosterers, had acquired some knowledge of the vernacular. But they could not read or write it. The names quoted by Bedell in 1628 suggest that this account of the parentage is true. Conway, Baker, Davis, and Burton are admonished for being absent from Irish prayers. These are not Irish names. It is also added by Marsh that most of these native scholars, bred in the College, turned Papists in James II.’s reign. This proves that they had Irish mothers, and would have afforded James Ussher a strong confirmation for his policy as against Bedell’s.

This society of students was then, as it has ever since been, very various in race, social position, and parentage, and to this not a little of its great intellectual activity may be traced. It should also be added here that one of the strongest natural reasons for the great prominence[23] of the Anglo-Irish, and the extraordinary distinctions they have attained in every great development of the British Empire, is that the English settlers of Elizabethan and Jacobean days were the boldest adventurers, the young men (often of good family) of the greatest energy and courage, to be found among the youth of England. They came to incur great risks, to brave many dangers, but to attain great rewards. The rapidity of promotion among the ecclesiastics, for example, is quite astonishing: Bishops at 30, Archbishops and Chancellors at 40, are not uncommon. And if these daring adventurers were often unscrupulous, at all events they and their quick-witted Irish wives produced a most uncommon offspring.

We do not find that any hereditary turbulence showed itself in disorders among the students. The early quarrels recorded are all among the Fellows, and upon constitutional questions. The main complaints against the boys were very harmless freaks, if we except the constant apprehensions of the Deans concerning ale or tippling houses in the city, which were assumed to be haunts of vice. Stealing apples and cherries from the surrounding orchards was a common offence, coupled, moreover, with climbing over the wall of the College. It shows Ussher’s hand when we find this local feature formally noted in the Caroline Statutes. A few of Bedell’s entries are the following:—

The entries of the 29th August (1629) are peculiarly interesting, but have hitherto not been understood in their local connection. There is an entry in Mr. Gilbert’s Assembly Roll (ii., p. 82) awarding a citizen £8 for a goshawk he had purchased for the city, which hawk had died. This is a very large sum—perhaps equal to £70 now, and out of all proportion to the salaries and the prices of necessaries in the College. To keep a hawk was, therefore, somewhat like keeping an expensive hunter now, and a proof of great extravagance. As regards the story of the pig, it was nothing more than a comic carrying out of an order (above, p. 13) frequently issued by the Corporation, whom Booth took at their word. It seems, therefore, that either such proclamations[25] were a sham, or that they only referred to the right of citizens to interfere with the roving swine.

The courts seem to have been in grass, as there is an early item for mowing, and 1s. 4d. for an old scythe. A vegetable garden was kept for the use of the College on the site of the present Botany Bay Square, and the further ground belonging to the precincts is called a firr park, which seems to mean a field of furze, much used for fuel in those days. There was neither room nor permission for the games and sports so vital to modern College life. The old and strict notion of a College life, still preserved in some Roman Catholic Colleges abroad, excluded all recreation as waste of time. The Caroline Statutes formally forbid playing or even loitering in the courts or gardens of the College. Nor was this any isolated severity. In the detailed horarium laid down for a proposed College at Ripon, to be founded by James I.’s Queen (Anne of Denmark) at this very time, every half-hour in the day is fully occupied with study, lectures, or prayers.[32] There was considerable license, however, allowed at Christmas, and it was perhaps from the old Monastery of All Hallowes that the fashion was transmitted of acting plays at that season in the College. The performance seems to have been undertaken by the several years or classes. In 1630 it was ordered that the play should be acted, but not in the College. The Lord Deputy constrained the unwilling Provost Ussher to permit it. Even in the Caroline Statutes, remains of this Christmas license appear in the permission to play cards—at other times strictly forbidden—in the Hall on that day. Every 17th March (S. Patrick’s Day), the town population came in crowds from the city to S. Patrick’s well at the southern limit of the College (now Nassau Street, opposite Dawson Street), there to test the miraculous powers of that holy well, which at that moment of the year worked strange cures of diseases. We can imagine the[26] furze bushes or trees around this well all hung with tattered rags, as may still be seen at wells of similar pretensions in the wild parts of Ireland. If the enclosed S. Stephen’s Green was still remarkable in the last century “for the incredible number of snipes” that frequented it, so the College Park must have contained them in abundance. But it was reserved for our grandfathers to boast that they had shot a snipe in the College precincts.[33]

The intellectual condition of the average 16th century student is even harder to ascertain, and I have sought in vain for adequate materials. It does, indeed, appear that the Irish New Testament and Prayer Book had been printed. Sir H. Sidney’s Irish Articles of Religion were brought out in 1566. John Ussher had promoted Kearney’s Irish Alphabet and Catechism, produced in Dublin from type supplied by the Queen in 1571.[34] William Ussher had produced the New Testament in Francke’s printing, 1602. This printer is probably the man mentioned as the “King’s printer” in 1615 (for proclamations?). But though there is extant a proposed arrangement with the very printer of one of these books (Kearney) to live and work in the College,[35] there is no trace of his having done any real service. Even the Statutes were in MS., copied out by the hand of the Provost or Vice-Provost. The annals of Dublin show, I believe, none but isolated printing till about 1627;[36] it was in 1641, both in Kilkenny and Waterford, as well as in Dublin, that printing began to be used for disseminating political views. But the earliest students must have found it very difficult to obtain books, and there is no trace that any printing press started up to meet this urgent want. I am now speaking only of text-books for students, by which I mean such small and handy editions as the Latin Isagoge of Porphyry, printed at Paris in 1535, of which copies are often found in Dublin, as the work was diligently taught in the 17th century course. Dudley Loftus’ Logic and Introduction, printed in 1657 (Dublin), seem to me the earliest books likely to have been used as text-books in Trinity College. Strange to say, there is no copy of either in our College Library. But[27] the official teaching was strictly oral, and the students were merely required to write out in theses or reproduce in disputations what their tutors had told them. The College course, as laid down by Laud (or Ussher?) in the Caroline Statutes, is plainly not a course in books, but in subjects. Not a single text-book, unless it be the Isagoge of Porphyry, is specified, and this rather for the lecturer than the students. Whatever practical relaxations the course then laid down may have undergone, it was chiefly in the post-graduate studies; for the officers of the College had no power to alter or emend the programme of Laud till the year 1760, when a special King’s Letter gave them authority to do so. This accounts for the great quantity of lecturing which went on, each tutor giving three hours every day, not to speak of the efforts of the College Schoolmaster, who undertook those that were raw in Latin and Greek. Archbishop Loftus, indeed, in his parting address to the College (Armagh Library MS.), exhorts the new Provost (Travers)—“See that the younger sort be well catechised, and that you prescribe to the rest a catalogue of approved books to be read by them as foundations of learning, both human and divine.” But this alludes to post-graduate studies, for which the Library was then established,[37] and not to the daily studies of the undergraduates. Logic was the chief subject, the system of Ramus being brought into fashion by the Cambridge Puritans, and especially by Provost Temple, who had written a book on the subject. Chappel was also a famous Ramist logician. Very little mathematics was taught, but, on the other hand, Hebrew was regarded as of equal importance with Greek; and in every subject we find the student’s knowledge tested, not by reproduction of his reading, but by disputations, which showed that he had so far grasped a subject that he could attack an adversary or defend himself when attacked.

[28]
[29]

The first fifty years of this History passed away without much apparent advance. The attempt to supply additional room by providing two residence-halls in the city (Bridge Street and Back Lane) turned out a complete failure.[38] As the College grew richer by King James’ gifts of Ulster lands, the quarrels of the Fellows and Provost were increased by this new interest. They were also still constitution-mongering, and we do not find that the only Dublin man, Robert Ussher, who was Provost during this period, was more successful than the imported Cambridge men. Among the Fellows appointed, if we except the remarkable group of founders, not a single name of note appears save Joshua Hoyle, who came from Oxford, and who was afterwards Professor of Divinity, and Master of University College, Oxford. The rest supplied the Church[30] of Ireland with some respectable dignitaries, but nothing more. We know that these things were weighing on the mind of the great Primate, who could remember the high hopes and the enthusiasm of Dublin when the College was founded. He was convinced that the Fellows wasted their energies in College politics, and that the Provost had insufficient powers to control them. Laud surely speaks the words of Ussher when he says that the College is reported to him as “being as ill-governed as any in Christendom.” Archbishop Ussher must have been determined to take from the Fellows the management of their own affairs, and entrust it to a Provost nominated by the Crown, administering Statutes fixed by the Crown, and only to be altered with its sanction. This great reform he carried out by having his friend Archbishop Laud appointed Chancellor, and so having a new Charter forced, in 1637, upon the College—the Caroline Statutes.[39] It was indeed a strong measure to take from the College its self-government, but it was done after due deliberation by wise men; and the results have certainly answered their expectations. It should, however, be added, in fairness to those who failed during the first 45 years to maintain order, that the Crown, while professing to give absolute liberty by Statute, had constantly interfered in appointments, and violated the privileges granted by Elizabeth. Nor indeed did the Caroline Statutes, which much internal evidence shows to be the work of Ussher as well as Laud, succeed forthwith. The experiment was baulked at the outset by the unfortunate appointment of Chappel as Provost, a famous logician, but a weak and not very honest man,[40] whose conduct was about to be impeached by the Irish Parliament, when the Rebellion of 1641 burst upon the land. Chappel was then Bishop of[31] Cork, but had refused to resign the Provostship. Ten years of misery supervened, when Chappel and the next Provost, Wassington, fled home to England, when Faithful Tate and Dudley Loftus strove as vice-regents to hold together the affairs of the starving College; when the estates were in the rebels’ hands, the valuable plate was pawned or melted, Provost Martin dying of the plague which followed upon massacre and starvation:[41] the intellectual heart of Ireland suffered with its members, and responded to the agonies of the loyal population with sufferings not less poignant.

Nevertheless, the appointment of the Lord Deputy, Ormonde (a great benefactor to the College at the worst moment), as Chancellor is dated the 12th March, 1644. He was chosen to succeed Laud. The actual deed is now at Kilkenny Castle.[42] The appointment of the Chancellor was made by the Provost (Anthony Martin, Bishop of Meath) and a majority of the Senior Fellows. Ormonde came back with the Restoration, and in high favour.

The horror of civil war in England was added to make the cup flow over. Charles, Laud, and Ussher were too engrossed with their own troubles to promote the regeneration of the College which they had commenced, and so we find that this decennium of anarchy was only ended by the strong hand of Cromwell, who undertook to establish order in Ireland. The[32] “crowd of Geneva” were accordingly established in the College; but justice must admit that Henry Cromwell as Chancellor, and Winter as Provost, behaved with good sense and zeal in promoting the interests of learning. They, of course, pressed home their doctrines upon the students; Winter called to the College zealous controversialists of distinguished piety;[43] private Christian meetings among the students were encouraged rather than official Chapels. Such of the former officers as acquiesced in these things—the Vice-Chancellor Henry Jones, who dropped his title of Bishop, and Stearne the physician—were continued for the sake of their learning. The care of outward neatness appears from the entries forbidding linen to be dried in the courts; they had washed it there long enough. The Provost undertook several journeys to the remote parts of Ireland, to recover the abandoned properties and collect the rents of the College. To the Commonwealth, moreover, is due the foundation (1652) of the School of Mathematics, which has since become so famous. This initial step was advanced by the bequest of Lord Donegal (1660), whose Lecturership is still known by his name.

When the Restoration supervened, Winter and his intimates were expelled as intruders, and a new governing body and scholars appointed. But as Cromwell had taken care to keep up the traditions of the College by continuing some of the previous Fellows, so the Government of Charles II. reappointed several men who had stood by the College all through[33] the interregnum, and saved the continuity of its teaching. Above all, the framers of the well-known Act of Settlement took special care of the College, securing to it all the estates to which it had a claim, and even endowing the Provost with charges upon forfeited lands in the Archbishopric of Dublin. Provisions were made for the founding of a second College under the University; presently Dr. Stearne obtained a Charter for the College of Physicians at Trinity Hall, close to the Green, in connection with the College. Ussher’s books, which were still lying in Dublin Castle, though long since purchased by Cromwell’s soldiers for the College, were now formally handed over to it; and in every way its interests were fostered and promoted. The Duke of Ormonde as Lord Deputy, and also as Chancellor of the University, and Bishop Jeremy Taylor as Vice-Chancellor, may be regarded as the main movers in this policy; whether other secret influences were at work I have not been able to ascertain.[44] How firm and wise a friend of the College Ormonde was, appears from the following protest he made to the then Secretary of State. An Englishman had just been nominated to an Irish bishopric. “It is fit that it should be remembered that near this city there is an University of the foundation of Queen Elizabeth, principally intended for the education and advantage of the natives of this kingdom, which hath produced men very eminent for learning and piety, and those of this nation, and such there are in the Church: so that, while there are such, the passing them by is not only, in some measure, a violation of the original intention and institution, but a great discouragement to the natives from making themselves capable and fit for preferment in the Church, whereunto, if they have equal parts, they are better able to do service than strangers; their knowledge of the country and relations in it giving them the advantage.[34] The promotion, too, of the already dignified or beneficed will make room for, and consequently encourage, students in the University, which room will be lost, and the inferior clergy much disheartened, if, upon the vacancy of bishopricks, persons unknown to the kingdom and University shall be sent to fill them, and be less useful there to Church and kingdom than those who are better acquainted with them.”[45] The scandalous policy of setting obscure and careless Englishmen to govern competent Irishmen, which reached its climax under Primate Boulter’s influence, has now veered round so completely that there is an outcry if an incompetent Irishman is not preferred to any Englishman, however competent. Both extremes lead to the same mischief—estrangement in sentiment from England, and in consequence narrow provincialism, which lowers the standard to be expected in important posts, by selecting the best local man, instead of the best man in Great Britain and Ireland, or even (for scientific appointments) in Europe.

But though the College was thus secured in ultimate material prosperity, there was for some years great difficulty in realising property, and we find elections postponed for want of funds in 1664 and 1666. A Fellow, William Leckey, was executed in Dublin for participation in the plot of 1663 against the King. Still worse, we still find in what Jeremy Taylor describes as “the little, but excellent University of Dublin,”[46] great poverty in profound scholarship. Two eminent men had indeed come out of Trinity College in this generation. Dudley Loftus and Henry Dodwell were second to none of their contemporaries in learning. Dodwell was offered a Chair at Oxford solely upon his general reputation. The catalogue of his and Loftus’ extant works is still astonishing. Loftus combined in him the blood of the talented adventurer Adam Loftus with the far sounder blood of the Usshers.[47] But these men would not or could not be Provosts—so that high office fell to such men as Seele, the son of a verger at Christ Church, esteemed highly by his contemporaries,[48] and Ward, who was of the old Loftus type, having come over from England, and obtained five great promotions, ending with the See[35] of Derry, in which he died, at the age of 39! No wonder that clever lads sought their fortune in Ireland. Ward “was esteemed a person of fine conversation and of great sagacity in dextrously managing proper conjunctures, to which qualities his rise to so many preferments in so short a time was ascribed.”[49]

It was a very great improvement, and of great service to the College, when the Duke of Ormonde reverted again to Oxford, and brought over as Provost Narcissus Marsh, whose Library at S. Sepulchre’s still attests the learning and wide interests of the man. Like every Provost in those days, he was promptly advanced to the Episcopal Bench; the College then afforded a stepping-stone to the episcopal as it now does to the judicial Bench; and if its rulers are now usually very old, they were then very young. Marsh was only five years Provost before his promotion, and yet even in that short time he produced a lasting effect upon the College. What would such a man have accomplished in a lifetime of enlightened government! But he was essentially a student, and the duties of the Provost were not then, as they now are, compatible with a learned leisure.

I have already noted that this enterprising Englishman was bent on promoting the study of the Irish language. Let me quote what Dr. Stubbs says—

He also promoted the study of mathematics, hitherto of little moment in the College. He founded a Philosophical Society, as a sort of offshoot of the Royal Society of London, to which he contributed a learned paper on Musical Sounds. The curious collection of ancient music still extant in his Library (bequeathed for the use of the City of Dublin, but mainly intended for a Diocesan Library) shows that he had a special interest in this subject. He wrote for the students a sensible text-book of Logic (see fac-simile of title-page, p. 37). He got a new and larger Chapel built, which lasted till 1798. But he was still in the era when the College authorities had no idea of building ornamentally. The houses and halls were merely modest constructions for use, and Dr. Campbell is quoted as describing them:—

This is, I think, to be said of all the buildings in Dublin during the seventeenth century. So far as I know, the earliest, and perhaps the best attempt at artistic architecture is the Library, which was not commenced till 1709.[53] All the handsome houses in Dublin date from after the middle of the eighteenth century.

[37]

When Marsh was promoted—he became ultimately Archbishop of Dublin and then Primate—Ormonde, the Chancellor, chose another Orientalist, Huntingdon of Merton College, to succeed him. But he was by no means so able a man; he came over with great reluctance[38] (1686), and immediately decamped upon the outbreak of the second great tumult, which turned out even worse for the College than 1641—the Revolution under James II., and the war which was only concluded by William’s victory at the Boyne. The Revolution was a sore blow for the College, which was now rapidly rising both in wealth and in intellectual position. The Senior Fellows did all they could to conciliate James II., without, however, denying their own Protestant character. The King, a weak man, gave them civil words; but they had to deal with his advisers, who varied widely in their aims and hopes from those of moderate men. The Acts passed by the brief Parliament of James II. have been recently brought into clear light by historians,[54] and the only wonder to be explained is the escape of the College from the secret Bill of Attainder which was to affect the liberties and properties of all Protestants, and from which not even the power of the Crown could grant remission. The anecdote how the members for the University kept out of the way, or sent the College butler out of the way,[55] and managed to have the College names omitted, seems to be a romance invented to explain an accidental omission, and to gain credit for some worthy people who did not fly to England or betray their public trust.

The first acts of aggression were demands to appoint creatures of Tyrconnell’s either to an Irish Lecturership which did not exist, or to Junior Fellowships, which required an oath of allegiance to the Crown and of adherence to the Church of England, as ordered by Charles II. in his Act of Uniformity. The Crown had been in the habit of appointing Fellows by mandamus, so that this proceeding was not so high-handed as it would be now-a-days. But the plain intention of James II.’s advisers, and especially of Tyrconnell, the Lord Deputy, was to force Roman Catholics into power and to dispossess Protestant interests. It is to the credit of the adventurers sent down to the College by Tyrconnell that they objected to take the oath. The Lord Deputy then stopped the Concordatum Fund of £400 a-year. It was a moment when the College so clearly felt its increasing numbers, that there was a proposal to sell some of the fast-accumulating plate to find funds in aid of new buildings. Apart from gifts made by the parents of pupils, there was a charge at matriculation for argent, as there still is in some Colleges at Oxford, and it seems to have been thought a convenient way of laying by money which could be easily realised in times of danger. How fast this plate had accumulated since the disasters of 1641 may be inferred from the fact that the College actually embarked 3,990 ounces of silver to[39] be sent to London (7th February, 1687). On the 12th, Tyrconnell was sworn in Lord Deputy, and had the plate seized. The College reclaimed it, and ultimately recovered it on condition of laying out the money in the purchase of land. It seems to have brought 5s. per ounce, and is said to have been “profitably” invested. If the College now possessed it, the money value would not be less than £5 per ounce; its value in adding dignity to the establishment is not easily estimable. As Dr. Stubbs says, the succeeding events are best told from the College Register, which he quotes:—

The interesting features in this crisis were, first, the steadfast and courageous behaviour of Dr. Acton and his three colleagues, two of whom sacrificed their lives for the good of the College; secondly, the excellent conduct of the two Roman Catholic priests, Moore and Macarthy, who not only exerted themselves with great humanity to save the Fellows and scholars and their property from outrage, but showed a real love and respect for learning, and a desire to maintain the College for the real objects of its foundation.[61] Thus, if it had not been for the narrowness of controversialists and the violence of soldiers, the assaults of Rome and Geneva were by no means so disastrous as might have been expected. Nevertheless, the College came out of the crisis of James II. with great loss of books, furniture, plate, rents—in fact, for the moment in great distress—but still the buildings were safe;[62] the character of the College must have been greatly raised by the conduct of its Fellows; there had been no time to occupy the estates with new adventurers; and the policy of the new King,[44] in spite of his well-known Liberal instincts, must necessarily be strongly Protestant after the recent outburst of the opposite party under his opponent, and therefore made him a firm friend of the persecuted College.

Before closing this chapter, we may say a word upon the changing aspect of the College and its surroundings, especially College Green. The foundation of the College soon brought with it a desire to build houses in its neighbourhood. But in Bedell’s diary we find that the first permission given by the Corporation to build houses close to the gate was frustrated by the students raiding upon the works, and carrying the building-plant into the College. The builder, indeed, recovered it by the interference of the Provost, but whether the building proceeded is doubtful. Still, we hear of Archbishop Ussher lodging in College Green in 1632, a very few years after; and a lodging fit for the Primate can have been no mean dwelling. There were several sites granted on the north side of Dame Street by the Corporation to gentlemen of quality, who built houses, with gardens stretching behind them to the river. I have found mention of three of these before 1640. Presently two larger mansions were erected there—Clancarty House, at the foot of the present S. Andrew’s Street, and opposite it Chichester House, always a large mansion, often used for Courts, and even Parliaments, till the present[45] remarkable building was set upon its site. It was one of the objections urged in 1668 to Trinity Hall (the site of the present S. Andrew’s Church) for holding students, that they could not hear the College bell owing to the number of intervening houses. Thus Dublin must have been rapidly growing out in this direction.[63] There are houses in Dawson Street and Molesworth Street whose gables show them to belong to the 17th century. So likewise in the streets off South Great George’s Street there are still many houses which bear the clear character of Dublin building from 1660 to 1700. All the churches were remodelled or rebuilt in the end of this or in the succeeding century. But, as I have already said, there was as yet no thought of stately or ornamental house architecture. The existing blocks of that date in Trinity College (Nos. 22-31) show what was accomplished, and though far better than the buildings of “Botany Bay,” which came a century later, are nevertheless mainly interesting from their date as marking an epoch in this History. There is no hint that the other lodgings for students, since taken down, were in any sense ornamental.

I turn, in concluding this chapter, to the interesting question of the recognition of sports and games among the students—a recognition which reached its climax under Provost Hutchinson. The following passage gives us some facts and dates:—

[46]

Some comment upon this passage seems desirable. In the Elizabethan and Jacobean College recreations for the students were not only ignored but forbidden. Young men came there and were maintained at the expense of the Institution, not to play, but to work, as I have above explained. This strictly theological notion was now giving way to a secular aspect of things, which tolerated the residence of students in the city,[65] and received wealthy young men, who came to spend, not to earn money. The facts just quoted are therefore interesting in showing that this change of spirit was now accomplished. For in colleges outward acts follow slowly upon new convictions.

[47]

Nec conclusisti me in manibus inimici: statuisti in loco spatioso pedes meos.—Ps. xxx. 9.

The great expansion of the College about the time of its first Centenary seems to have been rather the effect of circumstances than of a strong and able government. The Provosts were perpetually being promoted to Bishoprics, and were in any case not very remarkable men. Nevertheless, the Centenary was celebrated with great pomp, and in a manner widely different from that which is now in fashion at such feasts. Almost the whole day was occupied with various orations in praise of founders or of the studies of the place. We do not hear that any visitors but the local grandees of Dublin attended, nor is there any detail concerning the entertainment of the body, after the weariness inflicted upon the mind, of the audience. There may possibly be some details still concealed in the College Register, the publication of which among our historical records is earnestly to be desired. Dr. Stubbs (pp. 136-8) prints the following:—

To this Dunton, writing from Dublin in 1699, while the memory of it was still fresh, adds some curious details—

The sermon preached by Dr. St.-G. Ashe, who presently resigned the Provostship, is still extant;[71] so is the musical ode, but so scarce that there seems to be only one copy known, which the researches for the present feast have unearthed. Some of the text, which was composed by Nahum Tate, sometime (1672) a scholar of the House, is given above from Dunton; the rest, which is printed with the music, is of the same quality. It is chiefly a panegyric of the reigning sovereigns, William and Mary, justified by their recent indulgences to the College on account of its losses in the Revolution. The music of the ode was composed by no less a person than Henry Purcell, and would certainly have been repeated at our Tercentenary had it been equal to his standard works. But it is a curiously poor and perfunctory piece of work, whereas the anthem then recently composed by Blow, “I beheld, and lo, a great multitude,” still holds its place in our Chapel, and we[54] gladly reproduce it in the present festival. The title-page of the score of the ode states that it was performed at Christ Church, whereas the accounts of the celebration speak of it in the College—a discrepancy which I cannot reconcile.

The series of Provosts to whom I have referred—Ashe (1692), G. Browne (1695), Peter Browne (1699), Pratt (1710)—were all promoted to Bishoprics, except the first Browne, who died of the blow of a brickbat which struck him in a College row, and Pratt, who was so insignificant that he could only obtain a Deanery as a bribe for his resignation. Of these but one man has left a name, Peter Browne[72] who composed a work on the “Procedure of the Understanding,” evidently called forth by the recent Essay of Locke, which had been introduced into the post-graduate course by Ashe, and was then very popular. More celebrated, and more interesting in this history, is the well-known Charge to the clergy of Cork on drinking healths, in which the Bishop criticises “the glorious, pious, and immortal memory” so dear to Irish Protestants, and all such other toasts, as senseless, heathenish, and offensive. It was always understood by his contemporaries that this Charge showed the writer to be a Jacobite, and when we hear of the long struggle of Provost Baldwin in subduing this spirit in the College, we may fairly conjecture[55] that during the reign of Browne (1699-1710) it was allowed to grow without active interference. It may indeed be thought that the declaration of loyalty to Queen Anne, drawn up and signed by the Senate in 1708 (Stubbs, Appendix xxxiv.), where Peter Browne’s name as Provost appears next to the Vice-Chancellor’s, is evidence against this statement. The declaration was caused by the speech of one Edward Forbes, who was deprived of his degrees. I do not, however, think this merely formal declaration can overcome the indirect, but serious evidence of the Bishop’s personal Charge. There seem to be very few details published concerning this remarkable man’s life. But a group of famous young men were then passing through the College—Swift, Berkeley, Delany; and King, an old scholar, was Archbishop of Dublin. Berkeley was a Fellow, but we hear nothing of him in the College politics of the day.[73]

The Foundation, therefore, had now become strong enough to live and flourish in spite of, or in disregard of, its governors. There is now, indeed, much insubordination mentioned. There seem to have been many disturbances; the discipline of the place had doubtless suffered through constantly changing Provosts, who were probably counting upon promotion as soon as they were appointed. It was therefore of no small importance to the ultimate success of Trinity College, that for almost the whole of the eighteenth century it was ruled by three men who were not promoted, and who devoted a life’s interest to their duties. In the forty years preceding 1717 there had been (counting Moore) eight Provosts. In the eighty years succeeding there were only three, and of these the first, Baldwin, was[56] probably the guiding spirit during the rule of his weak predecessor, since 1710. The reasons which prevented Baldwin going the way of all Provosts in those days, and passing on to a Bishopric, have never been explained. His contemporaries were more surprised at it (says Taylor) than we can be. And yet these reasons are manifest enough, and disclosed to us in one of the most obvious sources of information—the private correspondence of Primate Boulter. That narrow and mischievous Whig politician, whose whole correspondence is one vast network of jobbing in appointments, came into power in 1724, and was for eighteen years the arbiter of promotion, even of lay promotion, in Ireland. He was a man so tenacious of a few ideas, that he keeps repeating them in the same form with a persistency quite ludicrous, if it had not led to very mischievous effects. He shows the same earnestness, whether it be in importuning Bishops and Ministers for the promotion to a Canonry of an obscure friend whose eyesight was so defective that he was unfit for any post; or whether it be in urging his narrow policy that all the high offices in Ireland should be filled by Englishmen. “I hope, after what I have written in many letters before, I need not again urge the necessity of the See not being filled with a native of the country.”[74] And it is remarkable that by natives he only means the Anglo-Irish who had now attained like Swift, some feeling for the rights of Ireland. Hence he shows in many letters a marked dislike and suspicion of Trinity College, which asserted its independence against him. This nettled his officious and meddling temper considerably. “I cannot help saying it would have been for the King’s service here if what has lately been transacting in relation to the Professors had been concerted with some of the English here, and not wholly with the natives, and that after a secret manner; that the College might have thought it their interest to have some dependence on the English” (i., 227). Swift and Delany he accordingly disliked exceedingly, and so persistent was his hostility to the Fellows, whom he calls a nest of Jacobites, that he kept hindering their promotion to the Bench during the whole of his unfortunate reign—for such we may call it—over Ireland. Twice he touches upon the claims of Baldwin, whom he confesses to be a strong Whig politician; he speaks of him with coldness. He mentions with alarm the rumour that the Provost is to be promoted, because he regards it impossible to find a safe man to succeed him in the College. He[57] clearly urges this difficulty as a reason against his promotion. In another place—which has been called a recommendation of Baldwin—he uses the following words:—“Since my return the Bishop of Ossory is dead, and we [the Lords Justices] have this day joined in a letter to your Grace, mentioning the most proper persons here to be promoted to that See. But I must beg leave to assure your Grace that I think it is of great importance to the English interest that some worthy person should be sent us from England to fill this vacancy. If any person here should be thought of, I take the promotion most for the King’s service here will be the making Dr. Baldwin Bishop, and Dr. Gilbert Provost.” To this letter he receives a reply in ten days, to which he answers in his next—“I am glad to hear of the promotion of Dr. Edward Tenison to the See of Ossory, and thank your Grace for the news.”

So successful, indeed, was this malefactor to the College in impressing his policy upon English ministers, that while the years 1703-20 had seen six future Bishops and three future Deans obtain Fellowships, from 1721 to 1763 but one Fellow was elected, Hugh Hamilton, who obtained either honour. The non-promotion of Baldwin was therefore a mere instance of Boulter’s policy, which prevailed for half-a-century. But the accident of this injustice was of great indirect benefit to the College. Instead of many Bishoprics, we obtained our first permanent Provost.

The greatest luminary in the united Church of England and Ireland at the time was the modest and pious George Berkeley. How does Boulter accept his promotion, which he could not prevent? “As to a successor to the Bishop of Cloyne, my Lord Lieutenant looks upon it as settled in England that Dean Berkeley is to be made Bishop here on the first occasion. I have therefore nothing more to say on that point, but that I wish the Dean’s promotion may answer the expectation of his friends in England!”

The next two Provosts were laymen and politicians, to whom promotion did not bar the retention of the Collegiate office. When the last of these three men passed away, the government of the College again lapsed into the hands of a series of Bishops-expectant, succeeding one another with monotonous obscurity, till the advent of Bartholomew Lloyd in 1837 marks a new epoch, almost in modern times. The eighteenth century, therefore, stands out with great distinctness in this history. Almost all the buildings of the College that give it dignity date from this time. A new conception of what the country owed to the University, and the University promised to fulfil, entered into men’s minds. Grants of hundreds now became grants of thousands; salaries were no longer pittances but prizes; the Fellows of the College became dignitaries, not only on account of their position, but[58] their wealth; and the much-tried and long-struggling College at length attained security, respect, and influence throughout the country. The external appearance of the buildings changed as completely as the spirit of the students. The College in 1770 was far more like that of 1892 than that of 1700.

The first of these three Provosts, Baldwin, had probably more influence on the history of the College than any one since the founders. He was either a self-made man, or put forward by some influence which disguised itself, so that many varying traditions were current about his origin and youth. Taylor, who gives very explicitly the authorities for his story, tells us (p. 249) that Baldwin, being at school at Colne, in Lancashire, where he was born in 1672, killed one of his schoolfellows with a blow, and so fled to Ireland. On arriving in Dublin, being then twelve years of age, he was found crying in the streets, when a person who kept a coffee-house took pity on him, and brought him to his home, where he remained for some time in the capacity of a waiter. A few months after, Provost Huntingdon wanted a boy to take care of his horse, when Richard Baldwin was recommended to him, and the Provost had him instructed and entered at the College. Dr. Stubbs ignores this story altogether, apparently on the ground of the (not inconsistent) entry in Kilkenny College, that a boy of this name matriculated from that place in April, 1685; the College admission book, however, gives the date April, 1684; indeed, most of the dates of his earlier promotions appear inaccurate, for though he may have been a scholar in 1686, how can he have been a B.A. in 1689, when he is known to have fled to England, and to have supported himself by teaching in a school in Chester? Dr. Barrett’s statements are evidently only hearsay. It is certain that grants of money were given to him as a refugee in England in 1688. At all events, he was made a Fellow in 1693, and a Senior Fellow in 1697, from which time he either helped in governing, or governed the College, till his death in 1758. He was Vice-Provost, under a lazy absentee Provost, from 1710; he was appointed Provost in 1717.

Baldwin appears to have been in no sense a literary man, beyond what was necessary for his examinations; on the other hand, he was a strong and consistent Whig politician, a disciplinarian, and evidently very keen about the architectural improvement of the College. He accumulated a large fortune, which he left to endow it, and which various claimants of his name from England strove to appropriate for seventy years. In spite of all these merits towards the College, he is not remembered with affection. The extant portraits of him represent a stupid and expressionless face, suggesting severity without natural dignity or[59] good breeding, though he became so great a figure in the College from the mere duration of his influence. He did little to improve the intellectual condition of the students. His temper was morose, and his policy of crushing out not only political, but other opposition among both students and Fellows made him for a long time very unpopular. It is more than likely that his tyrannical conduct in politics increased rather than diminished the Jacobite spirit in the College, for the recalcitrant tendencies of youth were then as they now are, and neither Queen Anne nor George I. was ever likely to inspire the Irish students with any enthusiastic loyalty.

But Baldwin may fairly be called the architect of the College. I do not include under that expression his vigilant supervision and enhancement of the College rents—a very important duty,—or his large bequests to the society, which have made the office of Provost one of wealth as well as of dignity. His claim to be remembered by the Irish public rests upon more obvious grounds. The undertaking of the present Library building coincides with his advent to power. It was actually commenced when, as Vice-Provost, he ruled for the easy-going Pratt. It was finished in the early and stormy years of his Provostship; and when we consider that of all the buildings which give Dublin the air and style of a capital not one then existed, we may better understand the largeness and boldness of the plan. The Royal Hospital at Kilmainham had indeed been recently erected, as the arms of the second Duke of Ormonde over the main door testify. This building, which a vague and probably false tradition in Dublin attributes to Wren, must have produced no small impression by its splendour. It was planned exactly as a college, with the hall and chapel in directum, forming one side of a quadrangle, and surmounted by a belfry. Such is the plan of many colleges at Oxford. And such was still the plan of Chapel and Hall in Trinity College when the eighteenth century opened, and when larger ideas suggested themselves with the increase of wealth and the disappearance of danger from war or tumult. Building had never ceased in the College since the Act of Settlement secured the great College estates in the North and West. Seele had worked hard to restore and enlarge the buildings, dilapidated through age and poverty; Marsh and Huntingdon had built a new Chapel and Hall on the site of the present Campanile, but excessively plain and ugly; even Pratt proposed the building of a new belfry over the Hall, a plan which was carried out thirty years after his resignation. The Chapel is compared by a visitor to a Welsh church. The old tower at the north side of the College, which had lasted from the days of All Hallowes’ Abbey, was restored by Seele, who evidently strove to save this relic of the past. The Front Square was being[60] rebuilt, when the dangerous interlude of James II.’s occupation beggared the College for a moment, after which the houses of the Library Square, which still stand there, were taken in hand. Perfectly plain they were, but solid, and have stood the wear and tear of nearly 200 years, not to speak of the improving fury of occasional innovators, who, even in our day, have threatened them with destruction.[75] They have been disfigured, as the Royal Hospital has been, with ugly grey plaster. If the original red bricks were uncovered, and a tile roof set upon them, the public would presently find out that they were picturesque. At all events, the west side, which was taken down in this century, was a better and more suitable building than those erected (“Botany Bay”) by way of compensation.

The bold undertaking of building the present great Library, without possessing books enough to fill more than a corner of it, must have been Baldwin’s idea. It was no doubt he who hit upon the idea of soliciting the Irish Parliament for grants, although the College was rapidly increasing in wealth. £15,000 was obtained in this way between 1712 and 1724, when the building was finished. The total cost is said to have been only £17,000! Dr. Stubbs deserves the credit of discovering the name of the architect, which was long forgotten, and which is not mentioned, I believe, in the College Register. He was Mr. Thomas Burgh, in charge of the fortifications of King William III. If the Royal Barracks, lately abandoned, were also his work, they offer a strange contrast to his plan for the Library. What his old Custom House in Essex Street was like I do not know.[76] Neither do I know upon what authority Dr. Stubbs adds another detail, that the two small staircases inside the west door, which lead to the gallery, were transferred from the older library, where Bishop Jones had set them up in 1651. If so, these staircases are the oldest piece of woodwork in the College, unless it be the pulpit used for grace in the present Dining Hall, which bears evidences of being equally old. The further history of this Library, which was rapidly enriched by many valuable bequests, forms the subject of another chapter.

The next improvement seems to have been the laying out and planting of the College Park, beyond a closed quadrangle behind the present Library Square, in which the students had their recreations. The walled-in court was probably thought sufficient, and most assuredly,[61] until the whole College Park was enclosed, the unfortunate students would by no means have been allowed to wander through it. The lodge, built in 1722 for a porter, at the north-east end, seems to imply that the fencing was then in process.[77]

These improvements were followed rapidly by the building of a new Dining Hall, commenced in 1740. A bequest of £1,000 seems to have been the only help required, and in 1745 it was even adorned with some of the portraits which still survive. But in 1758 this Hall was so unsafe that it was taken down, and after dismissing the College bricklayer for his work,[78] the present Hall was set up on the same site, and apparently without change of plan. It must be added, in extenuation of the bricklayer’s conduct, that the ground in that part of the College affords very insecure foundations, as we know from recent experiences. The present building has many great cracks in it, and the new rooms just added have had their foundations sunk to a great depth.[79] What is, however, more interesting as history, is to note that the style of this Hall, not finished till after 1760, is rather the plain and panelled building of the preceding generation. The Theatre (Examination Hall) is decorated in a very different, but not, perhaps, a better style.

While this work was going on, bequests of £1,000 were left to build an ornamental front and tower at the west end of the old Hall; and the well-known architect, Cassels, did so, close to, but a little west of, the site of the present belfry, in 1745. In this the present great bell, cast at Gloucester in 1742, was hung.[80] The aspect of the court, therefore, upon entering the gate, was that of a small square, closed towards the east with a building much nearer than the present belfry. The centre of this east range had the ornamental front and belfry of Cassels’ design, which, according to the extant plan, must always have been ugly,[62] and looks very top-heavy.[81] The north and south sides of this Front Square (built 1685) were of inferior character; while the small quadrangle beyond, on the south side, including the Provost’s lodging, was still the original structure of Queen Elizabeth’s time. The bell tower was taken down as unsafe, and the Hall removed, at the close of the century. We see, therefore, that in this great building period there were many serious mistakes made. There was so much work of the kind going on all through the city, that there must have been a scarcity of competent artisans, and much hurry. The buildings which remain are indeed solid and well finished; but when we attribute these characteristics to all the Dublin buildings of that date, we forget that their bad work has long since perished—what was done well and carefully is all that has remained. While Cassels was building his unsound tower, he erected another pretty building according to a bequest of Bishop Stearne—the Printing-House, from which issued in 1741 an edition of seven dialogues of Plato, in a good though much-contracted type (which is still preserved in the office), and on good paper, but disfigured by a portentous list of errata. The book is now rare, and in request among bibliographers. A few years later, neat editions of Latin Classics issued from the same press.

This architectural activity, based upon liberal but insufficient bequests, somewhat excuses the systematic begging petitions with which the College approached the Irish Parliament for the rebuilding of the Front Square, Theatre, and Chapel, petitions which that[63] Parliament seemed never tired of granting, and yet never able to satisfy. If the taste for fine building and the Parliament in College Green had not both expired with the end of the century, Trinity College would now be the most splendidly housed College in the world. Even as it is, intelligent visitors cannot but be struck with the massive and dignified character of its buildings. Queen Anne and George I. had already granted (in three sums) £15,000 for the Library. George II. granted £45,000 for the present Front Square and Examination Hall. George III., besides the relief of £70 yearly in pavement-tax, granted (in 1787) £3,000, in response to a petition for £12,000. So that, in all, the country granted the College at least £60,000 for building during the eighteenth century.[82] It is set forth in these various petitions that the beauty of the metropolis is one of the objects to be attained, as well as the health of the students, and accommodation for increasing numbers.[83] There was a curious hesitation about the plan of the west front. A central dome and two cupolas at the north and south ends were designed; the south cupola was actually finished. Anyone who enters the present gateway will see clearly that it is designed to sustain a dome. But this dome was never built; the southern cupola was even taken down in 1758, and the front left as it now stands.[84]

These buildings are still far the best and most comfortable in the College. All the bedrooms have fire-places, and even the inner walls are nearly three feet thick. The rooms in the towers and beside the gate are very spacious; and as we may presume that the streets in front of the College were not so noisy as they now are, were evidently intended as residences for Fellows, and were occupied by them exclusively till the rise of the various[64] societies, to which they have afforded excellent reading and committee rooms. Thus they remain to the present day a noble and practical monument of the enterprise shown by the College and the Irish Parliament in the eighteenth century. It is now no longer the city only, but the country which is interested in the College. Constant private bequests added to the public liberalities no small increments; and so far as material prosperity was concerned, the history of the College during the century is one of continued growth in popularity and importance.

When we turn to the internal history, the estimate afforded us by the facts recorded is by no means so satisfactory. As has been already told, the Jacobite spirit at the opening of the century, and the violent efforts of Provost Baldwin to subdue it, produced the insubordination which usually accompanies tyrannical conduct among young men of spirit living in a free country. Dignified as the Provost affected to be, he was exposed to personal insults more than once, not only from Fellows, but from students. Some facts have been collected by Dr. Stubbs, from whose work I quote the following:—

To this account we should add that Swift, who disliked and despised Baldwin, took a great interest in the Visitation of 1734, and went down to give his opinion concerning the management of the College, which he thought very bad. He also wrote to the Duke of Dorset on the subject (Jan. 14, 1735). But the fact added by Dr. Stubbs, that after the affair of Ford we hear no more of riots or of insubordination, shows that the mischief was not deep-seated, but caused by some small knot of rowdies. It does not appear that they were led by young men of the higher classes, for though many frequented the College at[71] that time, no names of prominence (save an Annesley) are mentioned in connection with any of the outrages. Such disorders have always been rather the fault of the Governors than of the students of the College. The course of Irish history is so uniform, the temper of the various classes in the nation is so unchanged (as every student of Irish history knows), that I do not believe the discipline which is so easily maintained now in Trinity College was ever seriously endangered, and the very fact that so many brilliant and learned men were being educated there at that period shows that its intellectual life was not impaired. The particular form of the studies pursued cannot be easily estimated. An examination of the Laudian Statutes shows that the authorities were not allowed in any way to change the subjects laid down for the course in 1637. The whole body of the teaching, as already explained, was oral, and each student reproduced in essays or disputations what he had been taught by his tutor during the week. Hence it was that such short books as those written by Dudley Loftus or Narcissus Marsh, though used by lecturers, were not formally proposed to the students. Locke’s Essay, as we know, was introduced into the post-graduate studies by the influence of Ashe and Molyneux before 1700, and has influenced the spirit of the University ever since; but this, too, was outside the prescribed course. It was not till 1760 that, by a special statute, the Provost and Board were permitted to make such changes in the course as they thought expedient. This permission, conceded long after it was needed and indeed assumed,[86] marks an epoch in the history of the College. But it belongs to the reign, not of Baldwin, but of his enlightened and brilliant successor, Andrews.

[72]
[73]

Provost Andrews, a layman, but a Senior Fellow, and one of a distinguished group of lay Fellows then in the College, succeeded less than two years before George III. became king. His Provostship is perhaps the most brilliant in the annals of the College. He was a man of elegant tastes, of large acquaintance, of scholarship quite adequate to his position, and he consequently did more than any of his predecessors or successors to bring the Society over which he presided into contact with the best and greatest throughout Ireland. Even under the stricter and more academic Baldwin, we learn from the Register that a large number of the highest classes in Ireland had begun to frequent the College.[87] We may assume that under Andrews this tendency increased. It was only necessary to prove that the education of Dublin was equal to that of the older Universities, to induce men of property in Ireland to avoid the troubles and anxieties of sending their sons by the roads and boats of those days to Oxford and Cambridge; and thus we find that from the opening of the eighteenth century to the second decade of[74] the nineteenth the great body of the Irish aristocracy was educated in Dublin. It would have been so, even into recent days, if the Senior Fellows of the latter period had thought earnestly about the dignity of the College.

The character of this Provost, according to his contemporaries and the historians of the College, was very different from that of Baldwin. He is indeed accused of good living, a great crime in a College Don, when it includes brilliant society and rich appointments; mere over-eating and drinking incur little censure. But Andrews could speak Latin with fluency and elegance, and we are glad to learn that in his day the Irish pronunciation did not make him incomprehensible in Italy or France. He built and occupied the noble Provost’s House,[88] which still remains one of the mansions that give to Dublin its metropolitan aspect. He entertained handsomely, both in the new Dining Hall and at his own House. He must have been the promoter and founder of the School of Music, which has produced a series of excellent Professors, and created a distinct school of composition, starting from that fortunate accident, a musical Peer—the Earl of Mornington, father of the great Duke of Wellington. The principal Parliamentary grants for building were during the extreme old age of Baldwin, so that I suspect the influence of Andrews, who was then a Senior Fellow, and a member of the Irish House, must have been the chief cause of this sudden liberality; for after the completion of the Library in 1724, there is a pause in the Parliamentary grants till 1751, and again they disappear after 1759, when Andrews became Provost, till 1787. But it is asserted in Duigenan’s pamphlet that the grants of Baldwin’s time were not exhausted during the whole of Andrews’ Provostship. I take it, then, that Andrews had ample funds for the fine buildings erected during his office.[89] Constant increase of the College rents and constant bequests made it possible to rebuild the Dining Hall in his time (1759-61), and no doubt much remained to be done in making the new front, finished in 1759, habitable. There was much hospitality, and good society was encouraged in the College. The greatest ceremony during his time was the installation of the Duke of Bedford as Chancellor, which is thus described by the Registrar:—

[75]

The reader will remember that the Hall mentioned at the opening of this extract was the old Hall, then entered under the dome which appears in all the views of the College of that epoch. The date of the first edition of the Statutes (August 22, 1768), when compared with this account, also shows that they were first printed for the purpose of this ceremony. The Chancellor’s copy of these Statutes had probably been lost, or never perhaps handed over to the Royal Personages who had recently been Chancellors; and indeed we wonder, with a printing press now over twenty years established, that the work had not yet been issued in print. The difficulty lay in the Laudian Statute, which specially provided that three copies should exist, and implied that no more should be circulated.[90] There is possibly some entry in the Registry which would explain how the Board evaded this obstacle. The printed copy bears opposite the title-page, in print, vera copia, Theaker [77]Wilder, Reg^r.

It is much to be regretted that the Ode, with Mornington’s music, has disappeared.[91] It is stated by Dr. Stubbs that the Duke of Bedford’s fine portrait by Gainsborough, now in the Provost’s House, was presented upon this occasion. But there is an exactly similar picture in the Dublin Mansion House, which must surely have been presented by Bedford, or acquired by the city, while he was Lord Lieutenant, seven years earlier. The portrait, therefore, in the Provost’s House must be a replica, unless it was presented to Provost Andrews much earlier than the date of the Installation. Our Bursar, in his history, states with cold precision the large amounts spent upon dinners to the Viceroys in these hospitable days. It does not appear that the feast given to the Duke of Bedford was by any means as costly as some of those given in later years.[92] Such are the gossiping details preserved concerning this Provost and his social doings in the College.

It might be easily inferred, were it not stated expressly in the angry controversies with his successor, that the discipline of the College was much relaxed, and many abuses tolerated by this amiable man. The old Statutes regulating studies in the autumn (out of term) had fallen into desuetude; the Chapel was shut up in July, and all business ceased for six weeks. Residence was not enforced at this time, or indeed at other times, in the case of poor scholars, who went as tutors into country houses. Still worse, the marriage of several Fellows, in spite of their solemn oath of celibacy during their tenure, was connived at, and thus a habit tolerated of trifling with solemn obligations, which not only brought great scandal upon the College, but lowered the general dignity and respectability of the Governing Body. Most of them were in debt to the College, and with the expectation of never having payment enforced. It also appears accidentally, from a document printed by Taylor, that the Wide Street Commissioners, making a report to the Irish Parliament in 1799 on the condition of the College property extending from the north precinct to the river, found that the houses and land had, by some great oversight, been let on a long lease (60 years), at a small rent, to the Bishop of Raphoe.[93]

[78]

We may assume that the great social successes of Andrews’ Provostship encouraged the Government, on his death, to promote another layman, and lawyer, into the vacant post. It was doubtless argued that, with the increase of wealth and splendour in the College, it must be represented by a public man, a man of the world, and a good speaker. But the new Provost, John Hely Hutchinson, lacked other and not less necessary qualifications which had made Andrews so successful. In the first place he had never been a Fellow, and thus was not only ignorant of the routine of College work, but also of the characters and susceptibilities of the Fellows. It was but natural that such of them as were baulked in their advancement by his appointment, and who thought themselves more worthy to hold it, resented the promotion of a stranger by political influence. Though Hutchinson managed to gain over certain members of the Board, he found others irreconcilable, and he is alleged to have dealt with them in unscrupulous fashion, both by attempted bribery and by open oppression. The moral standard of his profession, and indeed of the official classes throughout Ireland, was very low. Every successful man seems to have feathered his nest by obtaining or creating sinecures, nor was there any limit to the rapacity which accumulated them in the same hands. It was well that Hutchinson did not set himself to plunder the College for his family; the few cases of inferior officers whom he thrust upon the College, which his adversaries have exposed, are mere trifles.

But he was ambitious of political power for his sons; and he certainly strove to make the College a pocket-borough. This attempt brought about him a nest of hornets. The fact was, that bribery or intimidation, which might be used with hardly any risk in constituencies of ordinary electors, was sure to stumble upon some young gentleman of high character and independence among the Fellows or Scholars, and thus be exposed.

On the other hand, the abuses tolerated by Andrews gave the new Provost a great power of intimidation, which he could have used very effectually. Fellows with wives and large families, who had broken their solemn engagement to celibacy, and resided outside the College, contrary to the Statutes, who, moreover, owed to the College large sums of money for the purchase of rooms, which they could not pay, were practically in the Provost’s hands. It is much to be regretted that when a layman, an outsider, and a public man chanced to be set over the Society, he did not take in hand thorough reforms on these all-important points—reforms which could hardly be expected from an old member of the Corporation, promoted after years of acquiescence or participation in the growing laxities of discipline.

But the school in which Hutchinson was educated was even morally worse than that[79] of the culpable Fellows. There must be substantial truth in the constant allegation, proved by two Parliamentary inquiries, that the Provost’s assertions of discipline were not just and uniform, but intended to promote his political power. Both in 1776 and in 1790, when Hutchinson secured the return of his elder and younger sons respectively by a very narrow majority, there were petitions against them on the ground of intimidation and bribery, and the evidence then given is the real ground of the severe judgment which the local historians have pronounced against the Provost. In the former petition his son was unseated; in the latter—remarkable for having Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the future Duke of Wellington among its members—the casting vote of the chairman saved the sitting member. The evidence in both cases is so very similar, that we cannot but wonder at the incaution of the Provost, who was probably saved from a second disgrace only by his personal influence with the Chairman of the Committee. In this latter case, however, Hutchinson disowned altogether the person who acted as go-between, and who made offers to the scholars. He was private tutor to the Provost’s family, but was dismissed, and excluded from the precincts of the College by order of the Visitors.

The case is therefore strong against the Provost, though we should remember that in those days all Parliamentary elections in Ireland were carried on by similar means, and that bribery was only condemned by the law, not by the moral sense of the community.

This public evidence has, however, not weighed in the minds of historians so strongly as the violent pamphlet called Lachrymæ Academicæ, written against the Provost by his bitter personal enemy, Dr. Patrick Duigenan, who as a Junior Fellow was at perpetual variance with his chief, and at last resigned his Fellowship to take a Chair of Law, which was increased in value (with the Provost’s consent) to induce his resignation. This exceedingly violent ex parte statement seems to me chiefly valuable for its allusions to the internal affairs of the College not at issue in the dispute. The tone is scurrilous, and the confident prediction that a few more years of the Provost’s manipulation must ruin the College falsified by the facts. Instead of securing all the posts in the College for partizans of his own, the Provost met with more and more opposition, especially from the Junior Fellows, as years elapsed. In 1775, a scholar whom he had deprived insisted upon a Visitation, in which Primate Robinson, the Vice-Chancellor, decided against the Provost. In 1791, another Vice-Chancellor, Lord Clare, decided against him on the right of negative, which he claimed under the Statutes in every election. The sense of the Statute is plain enough. It ordains that the majority of Provost and Board shall decide elections; but[80] if such majority could not be obtained after two scrutinies—that is to say, if the Senior Fellows had divided their votes among three or more candidates, so that none of them had more than three—then the Provost’s vote, even if it stood alone, shall decide the election. This very reasonable Statute was, however, so worded, that another interpretation was possible, ordaining that even in an absolute majority of votes the Provost’s must be one. Lord Clare decided rightly that the disputed words una cum Præposito, vel eo absente Vice-Præposito, merely meant that the Senior Fellows could not elect without the presence of either of these officers.[94]

This Visitation concludes the long history of the quarrels of the political Provost with his Fellows. He was then an old man, and though he showed considerable vigour in arguing his case, it is evident that the fire of his ambition was burning low, and his combativeness decreasing with the decay of his physical powers. It is a great pity that while a collection of scurrilous tracts—Pranceriana, Lachrymæ Academicæ, and others—were published and widely circulated, and are still quoted against him, his own account of the history of the College, of his own doings, and of the character of his opponents, has remained in MS., and even this MS. is not now in the Library, but in possession of Mr. Charles Todd. It is therefore only known through the few extracts which those writers have made who have had access to this source. The impression produced by these extracts is strongly in Hutchinson’s favour; he speaks with admiration of some of his opponents, and with great calmness of his own political mistakes. Until this important document is thoroughly examined, the case for Provost Hutchinson cannot be considered complete, nor can we determine all the motives of his policy. We can, however, infer from the public acts of his government the following conclusions.

In the first place, he clearly desired to modernise the education of the students, not only by modifying their course of study (of which Dr. Duigenan says he was an incompetent judge), but by making them practise accomplishments quite foreign to old Collegiate discipline. The account of his improvements suggests that he advanced in the direction which Andrews had set for the College, but so rashly as to make his government a parody of that of his predecessor. Having himself called out his man, and fought a duel, he could not possibly interdict the use of arms among the students; and we hear strange and probably[81] exaggerated accounts of the number of students killed or maimed in affairs of honour.[95] Akin to the practice of arms was the practice of horsemanship, which brought upon him some ridicule when he desired to have a riding-school attached to the College. This idea was probably suggested to him by country gentlemen, who thought that their sons should receive a complete training for their after life in the University. The same ideas prompted him to found Chairs of Modern Languages, which have lasted to this day, and which proclaimed the startling novelty that not dead languages only, but the living languages of Europe are part of a liberal education. However late and imperfect the teaching of modern languages at the University may have been, we can here also infer that it was the solicitation of parents of the higher classes which made Hutchinson propose these changes, all of which tended to make the students men of the world.

As regards his own office, he did many things to promote its permanent dignity. He persuaded the Board to give him a grant for enlarging the fine house which his predecessor had built, and this addition is one of its chief features; it is the stately Provost’s study, added at the north end of the main structure. He took care so to lease the Provost’s estate as to preserve its rental undiminished to his successors. The same principles appear in his improvement of the College. With the aid of a grant from the Erasmus Smith’s Board of £2,500, he built the noble Examination Hall, intended for a Theatre or Hall of public Academic performances, at the fortunate moment when our 18th century builders had just reached the zenith of their art. No room in Dublin is more perfect in its proportions, or more rich as well as chaste in its ornamentation. He also persuaded the Senior Fellows, who trembled for their renewal fines, to have the College estates re-valued, and thus added a permanent £5,000 a-year to the property of the Corporation. We are told that he could not carry out this eminently honest and practical reform without guaranteeing each of the persons who sat with him on the Board against loss of income. Not one of them was willing to risk one shilling for the future improvement of the College estate. He[82] showed more questionable taste when he transformed a number of old silver cups into a service of dinner plates, which his enemies said he intended for his own use, and probably for that of his heirs; for he carried them to his suburban residence at Palmerstown [Park], and used them in his entertainments. The service is, however, still safe, and perhaps adds as much to the dignity of College entertainments as would the cups that were melted down. But we grieve to think what splendid old specimens of Caroline or Queen Anne plate have thus been lost.

So far as Hutchinson was a politician—probably accepting the Provostship with the determination to have the University for a pocket-borough, and so to attain a position equal to that of the County magnates—so far his life and conduct are open to severe criticism. In every other respect his 20 years of rule were both brilliant and profitable to the College. He continued the great traditions of his two predecessors, and far surpassed the men who succeeded him for the next 40 years. But whether the opposition of the Fellows was really irreconcilable, or whether he was himself wanting in tact or fairness, the painful result is beyond question, that he lived all his life at war with his subjects.

When his health began to fail in 1793, a full year before his death, intriguing for the succession to his place began in official circles. The Bar, who absorb so many posts outside their profession, began to speak of the Provostship as a political office; and had they succeeded in appointing another lawyer, we should presently have had it put forward as an axiom, that none but a lawyer is fit to hold a post which requires any knowledge of the law. We hear this absurd argument repeated every day with fatal effect. On the other hand, the Senior Fellows, who had considered this great post as their proper prize ever since the necessity of importing scholars from England had passed away, were equally zealous in counteracting these schemes. Four or five times did they send deputations to London to interview Pitt, Dundas, Portland, and perhaps with most effect Edmund Burke and the Marquis of Abercorn, both of whom exerted themselves warmly against the politicians and the lawyers in favour of an academical and clerical appointment. Even Burke himself was spoken of for the office, and then an English Bishop of Cloyne, Bennett, who was deterred by a threatening visit from some of the Fellows.

Meanwhile, the moment for the celebration of the Bi-Centenary of the Foundation had arrived. The Centenary had been held in 1694, the 100th anniversary of the first taking of degrees. The more correct date would have been 1692. But neither date was debated for one moment by the creatures who were thinking of nothing but the loss of a[83] step in their promotion, or the chances of succeeding to a lucrative post. All remembrance of the dignity of the College and its historic position was obscured by these personal anxieties, to which was added, in the minds of better men, a keen sense of the inconvenience of having a stranger and a politician as the head of a place of learning. Had any of the three great Provosts been guiding the councils of the College, this disgraceful omission of so honourable a commemoration would not have been tolerated.

But from this time onward, the College, having conquered in the great struggle concerning Hutchinson’s successor, obtained the practical nomination, and accordingly “the Senior Major of the Regiment,” or the next senior, was regularly promoted. By a curious coincidence, the influence of Primate Boulter’s policy, and the exclusion of Irishmen from Bishoprics, had also passed away, and so we find our Provosts passed on to the Episcopal Bench, leaving no mark upon the College, and taking no interest in ought beyond the decent management of the routine studies of the place. The history from the appointment of Murray to that of Bartholomew Lloyd, in 1837, is probably the least creditable in all the three centuries. No fine buildings were erected during these years. Even the belfry which was taken down was not rebuilt, and the great bell relegated to a shed in a remote corner of the College, where it lay for fifty years, till the munificence of a Chancellor educated at Oxford retrieved the disgrace. When the old Chapel was removed, so careless were these men of 1798 of the memories of the dead, that the alabaster monument of the pious founder, Luke Challoner, was thrust aside, not even into a shed, but into a corner, where the recumbent figure was defaced by the weather beyond recognition within thirty years. During the rule of the great Provosts there had been frequent bequests from rich members of the Society, who justly held that some practical expression of gratitude was due to the College which had conferred upon them wealth and dignity. That spirit died out with the century. From that day onward, many men drew £50,000 in salaries from the College, and did not return to it one farthing beyond their (often second-rate) official work. Constant gifts of plate from rich students, as well as Fellows, for the use of the College, had replaced the tax for argent, at one time levied (as it still is in some Oxford Colleges) on all who entered the College. These honourable gifts were no longer made, though any but a criminally supine set of rulers could easily have kept them up by example and advice. In fact, the existing plate was concealed in the safes of the Board-room, and never issued except for the Provost’s private use. During these disgraceful forty years no public display brought the College into notice except the lavish feast to George IV. (1821). At[84] the same time, the number of students was very great, the incomes of Seniors in renewal fines, and of Juniors in Tutors’ fees, larger than they ever were before or since; yet these were the years which justly earned for the University of Dublin the now obsolete title of “Silent Sister.” There was a day when Oxford, for like reasons, had obtained the kindred name of “the Widow of Sound Learning.”

And yet the moment when Murray succeeded was one more than likely to stimulate bright spirits to do brilliant work; it was the moment when revolutionary ideas from the Continent were making their way into Ireland; when hot-headed politicians were speaking of National Independence, of Republicanism, of the Rights of Man; it was the age that bore the great poets of the early nineteenth century. One of them, Thomas Moore, whom his greatest contemporaries have recognised and honoured as their peer, was actually a student of Trinity College. He was the last of a considerable series of playwrights and poets, which proves that English studies, at all events, were not neglected in the College course. Congreve, Swift, Goldsmith, Parnell, Sheridan, not to speak of Brady and Tate, and Toplady, prove what Burke mentions in acknowledging the honorary degree offered him by Hutchinson—“I am infinitely pleased that that learned body ... condescends to favour the unaltered subsistence of those principles of Liberty and Morality, along with some faint remains of that taste of Composition, which are infused, and have always been infused, into the minds of those who have the happiness to be instructed by it.”[96] He might have added another all-important training in expression, which used to be a peculiarity of the Dublin Classical School, and which Chatham devised as a means of making his son the prince of debaters. It consisted in the practice of free vivâ voce translation from Greek and Latin into English, wherein the fluency of expression was rated as of equal importance with grammatical accuracy. When we competed for Scholarships in the earlier half of the century, we were required to know a long course of authors in this way; and surely to express the thoughts of another language in fluent English is the best preparation for those who desire to express their own thinking in apt and ready words. So far, then, the narrowness of the Governors was not able to affect the students. Those who went into the world became practical orators of the first rank, while those who remained in the College sank into learned insignificance.

[85]

Yet the time, as I have said, was full of excitement, political and social. There were wars and rumours of wars, some men’s hearts failing them for fear, others beating with the expectation of a millennium of Liberty. It was impossible that the great agitation of the country should not reach the ardent spirits whom the late Provost had permitted or encouraged to mix in the world. They had, moreover, started a debating club, the Historical Society, which, after various modest beginnings and failures, became of recognised importance towards the waning of the century. The very essence of these debating societies is to transgress sober discipline; for while it is the duty of Governors of a College to keep their students’ attention upon abstract science, pure philosophy, and classical languages, it is the one aim of debaters to avoid such subjects, and choose those of present and burning interest. Moreover, in those days the modern engines of the press and the platform had not accustomed men to discount the mendacities, the false passion, the gross exaggerations of political oratory. Generous natures were more easily carried away than they now are, when the poison and the antidote succeed one another in the columns of the same newspaper. Wolfe Tone found even among the Fellows two distinguished men, John Stack and Whitley Stokes—these family-names have been for more than two centuries frequent in the honour-rolls of the College—who adopted the views of the United Irishmen, and admitted the principle of making Ireland an independent nation. It is hard to avoid the observation that Boulter’s policy of filling every post of importance with English placemen must have been a powerful agent in turning the opinions of the professional men in Ireland in this direction. Presently the College was seized with military ardour; a yeomanry corps was established, in which four companies were commanded by four lay Fellows, for the purpose of aiding the Government in the impending crisis. But along with the ardour for amateur soldiering so universal among civilians, there crept in the feeling that, with arms in their hands, men should secure not only peace and order in the country, but some recognition of the claims of Ireland, so long neglected and postponed to the most vulgar English interests. One of the captains was, in fact, already an United Irishman, though he seems to have been deterred from going as far as Wolfe Tone would lead him, by Tone’s open assertion that the liberties of the country must be attained even through arms and blood.

Presently it became necessary to revive the dormant Statute forbidding students to attend any political meetings; and when some of the scholars went so far as to avow publicly that they were United Irishmen, in the sense then considered seditious, and one member at least of the Board, who was also M.P. for the University, openly declared himself[86] opposed to taking extreme measures against them, the time seemed come for a formal Visitation. In all this difficult and dangerous passage of the history of the College the Provost is hardly mentioned. The result of the great battle between the Dons and the politicians upon Hutchinson’s death had resulted, as has been said, in the appointment of the Vice-Provost, Murray, a respectable, modest, benevolent old man,[97] wholly unfit to guide the counsels of the Board, or to lead back the wilder students into the paths of discretion or common sense. Moreover, the ultra-Protestant party were in such panic at the state of the country as to make them cruel in their punishments. The Vice-Chancellor was Lord Clare, a very strong and uncompromising member of the Protestant ascendency, who all through his life was perfectly consistent in advocating the English supremacy, and in crushing out all Irish aspirations, even with the halter and the sword. He had been baulked in his policy of repression by the admission of Roman Catholics to Degrees in Trinity College, carried in 1793 by an Act of Parliament, but which would not have been put into effect in that year but for the stout action of Dr. Miller, who, as Senior Master Non-Regent, stopped all the conferring of Degrees till the Vice-Chancellor consented to remit the old oath against Popery. The facts, which are worth knowing in their details, are thus stated by Dr. Stubbs:—

It may therefore well be imagined that Lord Clare came in no very good humour to visit the College, and that he probably desired to show to the public that the Act of 1793 had been followed by the consequences which the old ascendency party had foreseen, and therefore urged against it. The second Visitor was Dr. Duigenan, a man intimate with the College in former years, and a very good judge of the characters of the Fellows, now that the old quarrels and animosities with the late Provost and his party had been superseded by far graver questions. I will let Dr. Stubbs narrate the proceedings in his own words.

This drastic treatment, whether just or not, seems to have enabled the College to tide over the crisis of 1798, and to emerge after the Union into that period when it reflects[89] the dulness and prosperity of the country. The last Provost of the century, Kearney, is the type of his day. “This Provost,” says Taylor, with unconscious naiveté, “was always remarkable for his close attention to whatever might be considered for his improvement.” His only notable act was to refuse, with tears in his eyes, the resignation offered him, on the ground of religious difficulties, by the pious John Walker, and to expel him publicly next day. The same man connived at a number of his Fellows being married, in formal violation of their oath. Over against these unwholesome features, and the stagnation in the publishing of solid intellectual work, must be set the undoubted fact that there were men of sound learning and research among the Fellows. Mat. Young, Barrett, Thos. Elrington, Rich. Graves, Geo. Miller, were all men of respectable attainments in their day; and if the classical school produced no compeer of the expelled John Walker, it was at this apparently obscure period that the University of Dublin exchanged its reputation as a school of theology, of eloquence, and of style, for the reputation in Mathematics and Physics which was its only distinction in this century up to the reformations of Bartholomew Lloyd.

[90]
[91]

1792-1892.

Roman Catholics were not permitted to take Degrees in the University of Dublin up to the year 1793. By an Act of the Irish Parliament of that year, followed by a Royal Statute of the College in 1794, this disability was removed, but neither Roman Catholics nor Protestant Dissenters could at that time, nor for nearly eighty years after, be elected to Fellowships or Scholarships on the foundation of the College. In 1843 an attempt was made to contest the law on this point. Mr. Denis Caulfield Heron, a Roman Catholic Sizar, became a candidate for Scholarship in 1843, and was examined in conformity with the Statutes. There were sixteen vacancies, and his answering would have placed him fifth in order of merit, but the electors did not consider him to be eligible on account of his religion. Mr. Heron appealed to the Visitors, who declined to enter into an inquiry on the subject. He then, in Trinity Term 1844, applied to the Court of Queen’s Bench to grant a mandamus to force the Visitors to hear his appeal. This, after argument, was granted by the Court in June, 1845. In accordance with this command, the Visitors held a Court of Appeal in December, 1845, and they heard the arguments of eminent[92] counsel on both sides, aided by their assessor, the Right Hon. Richard Keatinge. Their decision was to the effect that, considering the precise and pointed language of the Act of 1793, and the whole body of College Charters and Statutes, it was the clear intention of the Crown, by the Royal Statute of 1794, merely to give to Roman Catholics the benefit of a liberal education and the right to obtain Degrees, but without allowing them to become members of the Corporation of Trinity College, or in any manner changing its Protestant character.

In order that the students who were not members of the then Established Church should not be debarred from the advantages of Scholarships, the Board in 1854 decided to establish a class of “Non-Foundation Scholars,” which should not be restricted to any religious denomination. The Scholarships were awarded as the results of the same examination by which the Foundation Scholars were elected, and were confined to those whose answering at the Scholarship Examination was superior to that of the lowest of those who were elected to Foundation places. The tenure and the value of the Non-Foundation Scholarships was the same as of those on the Foundation, and they were awarded for good answering either in Mathematics or in Classics.

Matters remained in this state until the year 1873, when the late Mr. Fawcett, afterwards Postmaster-General, succeeded in passing an Act of Parliament, 36 Vic. c. 21, with the full assent of the College authorities, which abolished Tests in the University of Dublin, except in the case of Professors and Lecturers in the Faculty of Theology, and opened all offices and appointments in the College to every person, irrespective of his religious opinions.

At the time of the Union with Great Britain, in 1800, the University lost one of its two members, but it continued to return one member to the Imperial Parliament, the electors being, as before, the Provost, Fellows, and Foundation Scholars. This constituency, taking account of minors, fell much short of one hundred. By the Reform Act, in 1833, the second member was restored to the University of Dublin, but the constituency was enlarged so as to include ex-Scholars, Masters of Arts, and Doctors in the several faculties, and special Commencements were held in the following November, at which a very large number of Masters’ degrees were conferred; the number of registered electors at once rose to 1,570. The constituency now numbers 4,334.

The history of Trinity College during the first half of the nineteenth century offers but little to note, apart from the great advances which were made in the studies of the University and the Professional Schools, and which will be hereafter detailed in their proper places. The increase in the funds of the College admitted, and the requirements of the College demanded, an augmentation in the number of Junior Fellows from fifteen to eighteen. This increase was[93] made by a Royal Statute in 1808. It was enacted that there should be no election to any of these Fellowships in any year in which there was a natural vacancy, and that in the case of no such vacancy happening, one of these new Fellowships should be filled until the number of three was in this way completed. These three additions were made in the years 1808, 1809, and 1811. In the years 1802, 1803, 1804, and 1806 there had been no Fellowship vacant at the time of the annual elections, and, but for this addition, from 1802 to 1811 there would have been seven years without a Fellowship Examination.

At this period, although the Statutes of the College forbade the marriage of the Fellows, yet it was well known that for a good many years many of them more or less openly violated the law of the College in this respect. In some cases their wives continued to be known by their maiden names; and the public understood this, and did not discountenance it. In 1811 a new and very stringent Statute was enacted, which required every Fellow on his election to swear that he was then unmarried, and that, should he marry at any time of his tenure of Fellowship, he would within three months inform the Provost. This practically required all future married Fellows to resign. An exception, however, was made in favour of the existing Fellows, whether married or not in 1811. The Celibacy Statute, as it was called, remained in force until 1840, when it was repealed, and all restrictions upon marriage removed. This repeal was not effected without considerable agitation, which commenced in 1836. The value of the benefices in the gift of the College had fallen at least twenty-five per cent., in consequence of the commutation of tithe payable by the occupier of land into a rent charge payable by his landlord. In the greater part of the South of Ireland where the anti-tithe war had raged, and where the clergy had found it impossible to collect the revenues of their benefices, the change was decidedly advantageous. In the North of Ireland, however, where the College livings lay, no such resistance to the payment of tithes had been experienced, and consequently the change was a loss to the clergy. This, added to the poor’s rate, which was then introduced, and the ecclesiastical tax upon livings, which was at that time first imposed, had so greatly reduced the value of the College benefices, that many of them failed to attract the Fellows. In addition to this, the income of the Junior Fellows had become more equable and more certain, and their labours had diminished in consequence of the change which was effected by the adoption of a division of tutorial fees and of tutorial lectures in 1835; consequently few of the Junior Fellows were disposed to change an agreeable literary life in Dublin for a retirement in the country, even though they should be thus enabled to marry.

In February, 1836, the Provost and Senior Fellows, two only dissenting, agreed to join the[94] Junior Fellows in an application to the Lord Lieutenant for a repeal of the obnoxious Statute, suggesting, however, that the six most Junior of the Fellows should be exempted from the permission to marry. The Earl of Mulgrave, then Viceroy, declined to recommend the change. At the end of 1838 a further memorial was presented to the representative of the Crown, praying that the Fellows above the lower nine of the body should be allowed to marry. The Provost and Senior Fellows concurred in the prayer of the memorial, stipulating, however, that the plan should be accompanied by such measures as would prevent the College livings from being declined by the whole body of Fellows. On the arrival of a new Viceroy (Lord Fortescue) in 1839, a memorial was presented to him by the College asking for a repeal of the Celibacy Statute. To this there was a considerable opposition on the part of the great body of the Scholars and prospective Fellowship candidates, on the ground that the existing Fellows would be settled for life in the College, and the vacancies for fresh elections would become very rare, and thus the highest mathematical and literary studies in the College would suffer. It was known, also, that the Archbishop of Armagh, Lord John George Beresford, who was then Vice-Chancellor, and who took a warm interest in the welfare of the College, was strongly opposed to the repeal of this Statute. In the end the Government was guided by the advice of Dr. Dickinson, afterwards Bishop of Meath, and in 1840 the Celibacy Statute was repealed; ten new Fellowships were added, one to be elected each year; the six junior of the Fellows were excluded from the emoluments of the tutors, and restricted to the statutable emoluments of a Junior Fellow (about £37 a-year, with rooms and dinner in the Hall); and the number of Tutor Fellows was increased from fifteen to nineteen, the average income of the tutors being thus diminished by 21 per cent.

It could scarcely be expected that an institution like Trinity College, which at that time had many political enemies, should escape a searching inquiry at the hands of a Royal Commission; and accordingly, in April, 1851, a full and minute investigation was made into the working of the College, the Commissioners being Archbishop Whately, Lord Chancellor Brady, the Earl of Rosse, the Bishop of Cork, Doctor Mountiford Longfield, and Edward J. Cooper, Esq. The Commissioners reported in April, 1853, and in a manner highly favourable to the College. They found “that numerous improvements of an important character have been from time to time introduced by the authorities of the College, and that the general state of the College is satisfactory. There is great activity and efficiency in the different departments, and the spirit of improvement has been especially shown in the changes which have been introduced in the course of education, to adapt it to the requirements of the age.” They ended in recommending[95] some twenty-five changes. But they took care to add that these recommendations did not involve any great or fundamental alteration in the arrangements of the University, or in the system of education pursued in it. “From its present state,” they add, “and from what has already been effected by the authorities of the College, we do not believe such changes to be required.”

Most of these recommendations have since that time been carried out by Royal Statutes, which were obtained at the request of the Provost and Senior Fellows, and in the application for which they were strengthened by the report of the Commissioners. 1. The Statutes underwent a complete revision. 2. Senior Fellows ceased to hold Professorships. 3. The Board obtained power to vary, with the consent of the Visitors, the subjects prescribed for the Fellowship Examinations, and to regulate the mode in which the Examination should be conducted, so that any Junior Fellow who holds a Professorship may now be summoned to examine in the subject of his Professorship. 4. Each vacancy for Fellowship or Scholarship is now filled by a separate vote of the electors, and the successful candidates are placed in the order of merit. 5. The fees payable to the tutors are no longer divided irrespectively of the number of pupils of each tutor, but a proportion of the fees paid by each student is paid directly to his College tutor, and the remainder paid into a common fund, from which certain Professorships are endowed, which are tenable by Junior Fellows alone. 6. The general obligation to take Holy Orders is no longer imposed on the Fellows, the number of Lay Fellows being at first increased from three to five. 7. Ex-Fellows are now eligible for the Regius Professorship of Divinity. 8. The Professors of Modern Languages are now elected as other Professors, and these languages may now be selected by students of the Sophister Classes and for the B.A. degree in lieu of Greek and Latin. 9. The Board and Visitors have now the power of altering the subjects for the Scholarship Examination, and by a recent Statute the tenure of the Scholarship has been limited to five years. 10. Twenty Senior and twenty Junior Exhibitions of £25 each tenable for two years have been founded, and they are open to students without respect to creed. 11. No distinction is now made between Pensioners, Fellow Commoners, and Noblemen as to the course of education required for the B.A. degree. 12. The formal exercises then required for the different degrees have been discontinued, and (except the M.A. degree) all the higher degrees have been made real tests of merit. 13. Full power to admit readers to the College Library has been conferred upon the Provost and Senior Fellows. 14. An auditor of the College is now appointed by the Visitors, and an audited balance sheet and account of income and expenditure is annually presented to them, and is open to the inspection of all members of the Corporation. 15. The Bursar is now[96] paid by salary and not by fees, and local land agents have been appointed in cases in which the occupying tenants hold directly from the College. 16. The College officers formerly paid by fees are now paid by salaries in proportion to the services performed by them. 17. There has been a gradual reduction in the number of Non-Tutor Fellows created by the Statute of 1840. These form the great majority of the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners.

In addition to these alterations some considerable improvements were effected by the Royal Statute of the 18th Victoria. The whole of the College Statutes were carefully revised, and the obsolete and injurious enactments were repealed. The power of assigning or of transferring pupils from one tutor to another, which Provost Hutchinson attempted to exercise in an arbitrary manner, was removed from the Provost and vested in the Board; and to the Board, with the consent of the Visitors, was given the power, which they had not before, of founding new Professorships and offices, and of assigning salaries to be paid to them from the revenues of the College.

Immediately after these powers had been granted by Letters Patent, the Board and Visitors acted in conformity with their new authority. In 1855 a decree was passed dividing the subjects of the Fellowship Examination into four—Mathematics, Classics (including Hebrew), Mental and Moral Sciences, and Experimental Physics; the time for the examination was greatly extended. Science scholarships were founded, and the number of days of examination, both for classical and science scholarships, increased; and in the same year a similar decree regulated the salary and duties of the Regius Professor of Greek, and founded new Professorships of Arabic and of English Literature. In 1856 certain salaries of College officers were fixed, and the salaries of the Professor of Geology and of Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Natural Philosophy (when held by a Junior Fellow) were regulated. In 1858 a decree was passed which transferred all fees hitherto payable to College officers to the general funds of the College, and assigned fixed salaries in lieu of them. Two Senior Tutorships, each with a salary of £800, were founded; the salary of the Examinerships held by Non-Tutor Fellows was raised to £100 per annum; Classical Honour Lectureships were instituted, and a Professorship of Sanscrit and Comparative Philology. In 1862 two Professorships of Modern Languages were established, the salaries of the holders being paid out of the funds of the College—the Act of Parliament 18 and 19 Victoria, cap. 82, having deprived the College of two annual sums of £92 6s. 2d. each, which had been granted by the 41 George III., cap. 32, out of the Consolidated Fund for this purpose. The same Act dispossessed the College of its earliest, and only, subvention from the State, which was granted by Queen Elizabeth—an annual charge of £358 16s. on the revenues of Ireland; the[97] grounds assigned for this deprivation being the removal of the stamp duties on Degrees,[98] which had been imposed on the College only thirteen years before. These duties (which have long since been abolished in England) were £1 on matriculation, £3 for the degree of B.A., and £6 for any other degree.

The University—consisting of the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor, Doctors in the several faculties, and Masters of Arts—having been governed for more than two hundred years by certain rules or Statutes which had, by lapse of time, become in many respects obsolete and unsuited to the present state of the University, and doubts having been raised as to whether the Provost and Senior Fellows of the College had the power to alter or amend these rules, Letters Patent were asked for and granted by the Crown (July 24, 1857), confirming all former powers, usages, and privileges, giving the Board power to make laws concerning the conferring of Degrees, provided that such laws should be afterwards confirmed by the University Senate, enacting that no “grace” should be proposed to that body which had not been first adopted by the Board; incorporating the University Senate under the name of the Chancellor, Masters, and Doctors of the University of Dublin, and giving the Senate power to elect the Chancellor from three names to be submitted to them by the Board, who relinquished their old right in this respect. Further Letters Patent were obtained in 1858, which enabled the Board to commute the fees of certain offices for lesser salaries, and to forego fees hitherto payable to them for Degrees which were in future to be applied to the benefit of the College; and out of the funds so transferred fourteen Studentships were founded, at a salary of £100 per annum for each, tenable for seven years, to be given every year at the Degree Examination; two new offices (Senior Tutorships), to be held by Junior Fellows, were created; two of the Non-Tutor Fellowships were merged among the Tutor Fellowships, and the remaining four were gradually discontinued. The Board was given power to sanction new rules for the distribution of the tutorial fees, and a clause was added enabling candidates for Fellowships to attend only on the days on which the courses in which they compete are examined in, and giving other powers to the Board.

In conformity with the powers granted to the Board by the Letters Patent of 1857, in December of the following year they remodelled, with the approval of the Senate, all the[98] University rules with respect to Degrees. Further Letters Patent were obtained in 1865, rectifying defects in the existing Statutes, specially with respect to the examination for Fellowships, and in 1868 for the creation of a Regius Professor of Surgery. In 1870 the Provost and Senior Fellows founded a Professor of Latin, under the same regulations which prevailed with regard to the Professor of Greek; and at the same time they founded forty Exhibitions of £25 each, tenable for two years, twenty Senior and twenty Junior, to aid deserving students in the prosecution of their undergraduate course. In 1871 the Professorships of Ancient History and of Zoology were founded, and in 1872 a Professorship of Comparative Anatomy.

The Act of Parliament amending the law with regard to promissory oaths, and that of 1873 abolishing religious tests in the University of Dublin, necessitated further changes in the Royal Statutes of the College, and these were effected by Letters Patent of 1874, which also founded the Academic Council, and transferred to it, from the Provost and Senior Fellows, the nomination to Professorships, and gave to it, concurrently with the Board, the power to regulate the studies of the College.

This Council consists of sixteen members and the Provost—four elected by the Senior Fellows, four by the Junior, four by the Professors who are not Fellows, and four by the Senate at large (excluding those who are already represented). The representatives of each class hold office for four years, are elected at the same time, and vacate office in rotation. The electors can give all their votes to one candidate, or they may distribute them among the candidates as they think fit. The election to Professorships in the Divinity School, of Medical Professors founded by Act of Parliament, and of Professors of private foundation the appointment of which is by the wills of the founders vested in the Provost and Senior Fellows, remains with the Board.

In 1851 a very important Act of Parliament was passed, which extended the leasing powers of the College in respect to the estates belonging to the Corporation. Prior to that year it was precluded from giving leases of the lands belonging to the College for a longer period than twenty-one years, except in cities, where sites for building might be leased for forty years. The rent to be reserved should be equal to one-half of the true value of the lands, communibus annis, at the time of making the lease. The Provost and Senior Fellows, however, might grant leases for twenty-one years at a rent equal to that which was hitherto payable out of the lands, even though it was less than half the value. The custom was for the College to renew these leases when a few years had expired, on the payment of fines which were in some cases considerable, and which were divided among the members of the Governing Body of the College. These renewal fines formed the principal part of the incomes of the Senior Fellows. By the Act[99] of 1851 (14 and 15 Victoria, cap. 128) additional powers of leasing were granted up to ninety-nine years without fines, reserving a minimum rent of three-fourths of the annual value; making, however, a reduction in respect to the tenant’s interest in an unexpired lease when it was surrendered. Also, powers of granting leases in perpetuity were given to the Board on the surrender by the tenants of the existing leases. These perpetuity rents were fixed by a regulation contained in the Statute, and were variable from time to time, at intervals of ten years, according to the changes in the prices of certain agricultural commodities. Renewal fines were abolished, and the Provost and Senior Fellows were compensated for the loss of them by a fixed annual sum of £800 paid to each of them out of the revenues of the College. Consequent upon the changes which have been indicated above, the Senior Fellows relinquished their claims to an annual sum, which, according to the Report of the University Commissioners, amounted to about £2,650, their official salaries being now fixed at sums according to the duties of the office; and, on the whole, the income of each Senior Fellow is on the average about £363 less than it was in 1851. The difference has been employed in the foundation of Studentships and Exhibitions, the annual charge for which is about £2,000.

The most serious danger with which Trinity College has been threatened during the present century arose from an attempt which the Government of the day made in 1873 to deprive it of its University powers, and of a large portion of its endowments. A Bill was introduced into the House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone for the purpose of establishing one University in Ireland, and an essential part of its proposals was that Trinity College should cease to be the University of Dublin, and that another Mixed Body should take its place. That the power of conferring Degrees and regulating Professorships in this University, and of appointing and dismissing the Professors, should be vested in a Council of twenty-eight members, of which Trinity College should have the power of nominating only two. It proposed that there should be a number of affiliated Colleges in the country, and that they too should be represented on this Council, so that a College able to matriculate fifty students should send one representative, and a College able to matriculate one hundred and fifty should send two members, and that no College, however numerous its students, should be represented by a larger number of members. It was, moreover, another essential part of this measure, that neither Mental and Moral Science nor History should form any part of the Professorial instruction or of the University Examinations. In order to assist in making up an endowment of £50,000 per annum for the purposes of this University, it was proposed to suppress Queen’s College, Galway, and allocate the £10,000 a-year of its endowment; to put a charge of £12,000 annually on[100] the estates of Trinity College; and to transfer, moreover, the Degree fees, which are now paid into the general funds of this College, to the Governing Body of the new University. The buildings, the library, and the remainder of the endowments were to belong to the College, which in other respects should remain, as at present, as a teaching institution.

It is needless to say that this Bill, if carried into a law, would have ruined Trinity College. A large number of its students would have been withdrawn, for they could have the prestige of the Degree of the University of Dublin without being members of the College, and the fees which they at present pay to the support of the College and its teachers would have been no longer available. It is not too much to assert that the College would have lost 33 per cent. of its available revenue, and that it would have been impossible to maintain it on the income which remained.

Fortunately for the College, the Roman Catholic Bishops opposed the plan of the Government, which did not include the endowment of a Roman Catholic College, and which did not meet their demand for a Roman Catholic University. After a debate lasting for four nights, the Government proposal was rejected on the 11th of March, 1873, by a majority of three.

There were two important occasions upon which entertainments on a scale of considerable grandeur were given during the present century in the Hall of Trinity College. The first was in 1821, on the occasion of the visit of George the Fourth to Ireland, when the King honoured the College with his presence at a great banquet. His Majesty was received in the Library, where addresses were presented to him, and after receiving them most graciously he was conducted through a passage made for the occasion into the Examination Hall, where were collected at dinner a considerable number of the Irish nobility, the Bishops of the Irish Church, the Judges, and many of the most influential persons in the country, along with the distinguished suite which attended the King.

His Majesty afterwards expressed himself as much gratified by the reception which he met with in the College. On this occasion the scholars were entertained at the same time in the Dining Hall, under the presidency of Dr. Sadlier, then a Junior Fellow, and afterwards Provost. It was in connection with this visit of the King that the University of Dublin asserted and secured its right of precedency after the Corporation of the City.

The second occasion was in August, 1835, when the British Association made its first visit to Dublin; Dr. Bartholomew Lloyd, then Provost, was the President of the Association, and some of the leading scientific men of England and of the Continent were[101] present. A considerable number of these were accommodated during the meeting with chambers in the College, and had their breakfasts and dinners in the Hall. A great banquet was, moreover, given to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (the Earl of Mulgrave), and to about 300 members of the Association, in the Examination Hall. The guests assembled before dinner in the College Library, and His Excellency took the opportunity of conferring the honour of Knighthood upon the Professor of Astronomy, William Rowan Hamilton. This was the first instance in which an Irish Viceroy had so honoured an individual for eminent scientific merit. At the dinner which followed, Professor Whewell of Cambridge remarked in his speech that it was then just one hundred and thirty-six years since a great man in another University knelt down before his Sovereign and rose up Sir Isaac Newton. Among the foreign visitors were De Toqueville, Montalembert, Barclay de Tolly, L. Agassiz, and many others.

The general history of Trinity College during the nineteenth century would be incomplete if some reference were not made to a matter which elicited considerable public feeling at the time, but which is now almost forgotten. On the 12th of March, 1858, the Earl of Eglinton, who had been very popular as Viceroy of Ireland on a previous occasion, returned as Lord Lieutenant on a change of Ministry. It was quite a holiday in Dublin. Several hundreds of the students had assembled within the enclosed space in front of the College (which was at that time larger than it is now), and had crowded out into the street, for the purpose of witnessing the procession in its progress up College Green and Dame Street to the Castle. For some time previous to the approach of the Lord Lieutenant, they amused themselves by letting off squibs and crackers, and by throwing orange peel and other similar missiles at the crowd outside, as well as at the police. The Junior Dean, apprehending some ill results if the disposition and temper of the students were misunderstood by the people and by the police, went out amongst them, and begged that they would not resent these demonstrations on the part of the students. No political display was intended by them, and consequently if good humour were preserved on both sides all would pass off quietly. Colonel Browne, who was in command of the police, on two or three occasions went inside the railings to reason with the students; his reception on each occasion was courteous, and he was cheered by the College men. From the period when the Viceregal procession came in sight, there was a suspension of the bombardment from within the College rails. As the Lord Lieutenant passed by, there was very little political manifestation by the students. After the procession had passed, those within the railings commenced again to throw[102] crackers, squibs, and oranges, and the confusion increased. Colonel Browne rode up, and in vain endeavoured to be heard. He was struck in the face by an orange, amidst a shout of laughter from the students and from the crowds in the street. At this time he seemed to lose his temper, and went to Colonel Griffiths commanding the Scots Greys, who were posted near the Bank of Ireland, and asked him to charge. Colonel Griffiths laughed, and asked whom he was to charge—was it a parcel of schoolboys? Colonel Browne then brought a party of the mounted police in front of the soldiers, and drew up immediately in their rear a body of the foot police, with their batons in their hands. At this juncture the Junior Dean, foreseeing that something serious was likely to ensue if the students did not at once disperse, called on such of them as were outside the College railings to come within the College gate, and he succeeded in getting a considerable number of them inside the College, and had the gates closed. Many of the students, however, were unable to get inside—some were with the Junior Dean inside the railings and some in the street. Immediately after this Colonel Browne ordered the mounted police to Charge. The outer gates of the enclosure were forced open; the police, mounted as well as on foot, at once rushed on the students within the railings (the statues of Burke and Goldsmith had not at that time been erected); they cut at them with their sabres, rode over them, and the unmounted men used their batons in every direction and indiscriminately as regarded the persons with whom they came in contact. The students had no means of defending themselves, the Junior Dean having early in the proceedings induced them to give up to him the sticks which they carried. Several of them were struck down, and deliberately batoned again and again while on the ground by the foot police in a most inhuman manner. The Junior Dean then went outside the railings, and, addressing Colonel Browne, said that he would engage to withdraw the students if the Colonel would withdraw the police. This was assented to, but the foot police for a considerable time waited within the enclosure. So great was the violence of the assault of the mounted men that, in following the students who rushed into the College through the open wicket gate, they used their swords with such vigour against the wooden gate that it showed several marks of their sabres, large pieces being cut off in some places. Among the students whose lives were endangered by the onslaught of the police were Mr. Leeson, Mr. J. W. Gregg, Mr. Pollock, Mr. Fuller, Mr. Leathem, Mr. Brownrigg, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Lyndsay, and Mr. Chadwick. Some of them suffered very severe injuries. Mr. Clarke was wounded in the back with a sabre cut while he was stretched on the ground from the blow of a baton. The College authorities prosecuted[103] Colonel Browne and some of the police criminally for an assault on the students, but they were acquitted by a jury at the ensuing Commission. It is pleasing to add that since that time the best relations have existed between the students and the Metropolitan police; indeed, the feelings of the latter body were supposed at the time to have been excited by some strong observations which were made in the columns of a Dublin newspaper which appeared on the morning of the occurrence.

The Divinity School of Trinity College.—The institution of a special school designed for the instruction of the future clergy of the Church of Ireland did not take effect until the close of the eighteenth century. The students of Trinity College, under instruction, were at the beginning of this century either undergraduates or Bachelors of Arts. The undergraduates were lectured in classics and mathematics by public lecturers appointed by the College, and their religious training was specially entrusted to the Catechist. After they took the B.A. degree they still continued under instruction by the several Professors of the mathematical and physical sciences, of Greek, and of the several faculties, while their religious instruction was under the special care of the Regius Professor of Divinity, and of a Lecturer of early but uncertain foundation, which latter post was afterwards endowed with the interest of £1,000 by Archbishop King. Junior Bachelors attended the prelections of this Lecturer, and Middle and Senior Bachelors the prelections of the Regius Professor; and this attendance was compulsory upon all graduates in residence. Many ex-Scholars of Trinity College remember well that until recent times all Scholars who were graduates were obliged to attend, at their choice, certain courses of lectures with the Professors of Greek or Oratory or Mathematics or Law, but all were, without distinction, under pain of losing their salaries, obliged to attend lectures with either the Regius Professor of Divinity or Archbishop King’s Lecturer. In the year 1790, at a meeting of the Irish Bishops, it was determined that they would in future not ordain any candidate who had not the B.A. degree and a certificate of having attended lectures in Divinity for one academic year (at that time consisting of four terms), and they forwarded to the Board a list of books in which the Bishops had decided that candidates for Holy Orders should be examined prior to ordination. The Board, in reply, informed the Bishops that they would direct the assistant to Archbishop King’s Lecturer to prepare the students in these books. From 1790 to 1833 Divinity students attended the lectures of the assistants to Archbishop King’s Lecturer (the Regius Professor had not at that time any assistants) on two days in the[104] week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, from eight to nine in the morning. They were put through Burnet on the Thirty-nine Articles, and if any student attended three-fourths[99] of the lectures in each of the four terms of the Junior Bachelor year he received a certificate, which was inserted in the testimonium of his degree, and on this he was entitled to present himself for the Ordination Examination. The Rev. Richard Brooke, in his Recollections of the Irish Church, gives a very vivid account of his experience as a Divinity student in 1827. The books he then read—they could not have been all lectured on (and there is no record of any compulsory Divinity examination)—were Burnet, Pearson, Mosheim, Paley’s Evidences, Magee on the Atonement, Wheatley on the Common Prayer, Tomline on the Articles, Butler’s Analogy, and the Bible and Greek Testament, with Patrick Lowth and Whitby’s Commentary. It is believed, from the testimony of clergymen who were students at that period, that the lectures were confined very much to Burnet and Butler.

At that time, Archbishop King’s Lecturer in Divinity was an annual office poorly endowed, and, like the Professorships of Greek, of Mathematics, and of Civil Law, held always by a Senior Fellow. Such was the condition of things up to 1833. The Divinity Professors were mainly engaged in prelecting to graduate Scholars, and to such graduates as desired to attend their lectures. In that year the Divinity School was arranged upon its present basis. Dr. Elrington was, in 1833, Regius Professor of Divinity; and the annual office of Archbishop King’s Lecturer was separated from a Senior Fellowship, was endowed with £700 a-year from the funds of the College, and was given to Dr. O’Brien, afterwards Bishop of Ossory, but at that time a Junior Fellow, as a permanent Professorship. The course was extended to one of two years’ length, compulsory examinations were instituted, assistants to the Regius Professor were then first appointed, and he and they had the care of the Senior class, consisting only of those who had passed the B.A. examination. Archbishop King’s Lecturer and his assistants had the instruction of the Junior class of Divinity students entrusted to them. These were for the most part Senior Sophisters.

The Divinity course now comprises two years’ study of Divinity, each consisting of three academic terms. Students generally begin to attend lectures at the beginning of their third year in Arts. In the Junior year they are lectured by Archbishop King’s Lecturer on the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, and in the Socinian Controversy; and by his assistants in the Greek of the Gospels and of the Epistle to the Romans, and in Pearson on the[105] Creed. There are three days set apart for composition of sermons and essays each term, when the students are brought into the Hall, and are given either a text of Scripture, or a subject connected with the Professor’s lectures for that term, to write upon; two such compositions at least, in each term, are obligatory. During the Christmas and Easter recesses the students are obliged to study one of the Epistles in Greek, and a portion of Ecclesiastical History, in which they are examined on the first lecture-day of the following term. Having completed three terms’ lectures, they pass an examination in certain text-books connected with the studies of the Junior year, and in the English New Testament; in specified portions of the Greek Testament, and in the Professor’s prelections. Having passed this examination, they are permitted to attend the lectures of the Regius Professor of Divinity and his assistants for the next three terms. The lectures of the Regius Professor are upon the Book of Common Prayer, the Canon of Holy Scripture, and the Roman Catholic Controversy; and his assistants lecture upon Bishops Burnet and Browne on the Thirty-nine Articles, and upon the Greek of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians and the Epistle to the Hebrews. The rules with regard to study in the intervals between the terms and composition are nearly the same as those of the Junior year; and when the student has completed his sixth term of study, he presents himself at the examination for the Divinity Testimonium, after he has, in nearly every case, taken his B.A. degree. Lectures in Ecclesiastical History, in Hebrew, in Pastoral Theology, and in Biblical Greek are provided, but they are not compulsory. The number of Divinity Testimoniums granted for each of the last five years averaged 35, and for each of the previous five years the average was 32.[100]

The subjects of the Divinity lectures for the Junior year were arranged in reference to the controversies which were most prevalent in the Irish Church in the year 1833, and also in reference to the special theological aptitudes of Dr. O’Brien. He was peculiarly fitted to treat of the evidences of natural and revealed religion, and to reply to the objections to both which were then current. Those who remember his prelections can bear testimony to the wonderful ability and skill with which he dealt with the infidel controversy of his time, and the light which he threw upon the well-known arguments of Bishop Butler. The Socinian controversy at that period occupied the serious attention of the Irish clergy, and it was necessary that all the young[106] ministers of the Church should be prepared to deal with the arguments of the Unitarian when they entered upon their duties as curates.

Prior to 1814 the Regius Professor of Divinity held no public examination in the subjects of his course. In 1813 Dean Graves, who at that time held the office, submitted to the Board a plan for the improvement of Divinity lectures, and a new Royal Statute was obtained regulating the duties of the Professor. He was bound to deliver prelections during term, but they were practically confined to the first week in Michaelmas term, the first and second weeks in Hilary term, and the first week in Easter term. He was also bound to hold an examination once a-year, open to Bachelors of Arts. The subjects of this examination were fixed by Statute. On the first morning it was the Old Testament, the first afternoon the New; on the second morning in Ecclesiastical History, and the second afternoon in the Articles and Liturgy of the Church of England. In 1814 the Board instituted prizes at this examination, which was otherwise voluntary. On the first occasion thirty graduates entered their names for the examination, but only five attended, and it ended in only three or four highly prepared Divinity students presenting themselves each year for a searching examination in an extended course. In 1859 these Divinity prizes were enlarged into Theological Exhibitions, two of which, of £60 and £40 a-year, tenable for three years, are now awarded as the result of this examination, greatly enlarged and extended by the addition of selections from the writings of the Fathers and specified portions of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Prizes also at the end of the first Divinity year, called after the name of Archbishop King, were founded in 1836. Both these stimulants to theological study, aided by annual prizes at examinations held by the Professors of Biblical Greek and of Ecclesiastical History, have very widely extended the reading of the best class of Divinity students. Candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity are now required to pass an examination in the whole of the extended range of theological subjects required of candidates for the Exhibitions; but as those who seek Divinity degrees are generally clergymen who are engaged in the duties of their calling, they are allowed to divide the examination into parts and to pass it in detail instead of on one occasion. Few of the modern arrangements have been so successful as this. By directing and encouraging a wide course of theological reading among the younger clergy, it has produced an excellent effect, and the popularity of the arrangement is manifested by the large increase in the number of candidates for the B.D. degree by examination.

It would give an incomplete account of the preparation of candidates for Holy Orders in Trinity College, Dublin, if we were to omit the mention of the important training which the College Theological Society affords to the students. Once in each week during term the[107] members meet under the presidency of either the Regius Professor or of Archbishop King’s Lecturer in Divinity; essays on theological subjects, or on one of the important religious questions of the day, are read by the students in turn; a debate upon the essay follows, which is watched over and moderated by the President, who, at the conclusion, makes such observations as he thinks fit. The students are in this manner practised in thoughtful and carefully prepared composition, and in extempore speaking; and the great benefits derived by Divinity students from this voluntary society are universally admitted—advantages which have been mainly due to the unremitting care of the late Bishop Butcher, formerly Regius Professor, and his successors in that chair.

The Medical School.—The marked and rapid growth of the Medical School of the University of Dublin has been one of the most notable events in its history during the nineteenth century. Although it was in existence in Trinity College since 1711, it was only in 1786 that it was placed on its present footing by an Act of the Irish Parliament, which united the College of Physicians with Trinity College in the joint management of the instruction given in this school. Five of the teachers are appointed by the Provost and Senior Fellows, and four (designated King’s Professors) by the College of Physicians, the Trustees of Sir Patrick Dun’s estates. This Statute further required that all who shall be in attendance on medical lectures, whether students of Trinity College or extern students in Medicine, shall be matriculated by the Senior Lecturer.

For the first fifteen years these matriculations averaged only 4·7 each year. The numbers gradually increased, until in the years 1809-1813, inclusive, the average reached 41·4 each year; from 1814 to 1824 they rose to an average of 66·5. In the next quinquennial period they increased to the large number of 90·8 annually. In the years from 1831 to 1835 the average fell to 63, and in the following two years the number barely exceeded 28 each year. The great increase of medical students in the period between 1814 and 1835 is to be attributed mainly to the eminence of the University Professor of Anatomy and Chirurgery—James Macartney[101]—a[108] man of the greatest powers both as an anatomist, a biologist, and surgical teacher. On his ceasing to hold the Professorship, the number of students in the Medical School fell to what it had been before his appointment; and having continued at a low level for thirty years, it suddenly rose to an average of nearly 80 entrances in 1864, in which year Doctor Edward H. Bennett, the present Professor of Surgery, was appointed to the office of University Anatomist—an office which had, after being in abeyance for a century, been revived in 1861. From this time the numbers have gradually risen until they amounted to more than they were in the most flourishing period of Doctor Macartney’s teaching. Doctor Macartney held the Chair of Anatomy for twenty-four years, until July, 1837, when he resigned the office, very much because he was unwilling to submit to the rules laid down by the governing body of the College. In the year 1834 a complaint was made to the Provost and Senior Fellows, by the other Professors of the Medical School, that he had fixed his lectures at an hour, from 3 to 4 p.m., which interfered with those of the other Professors of that school. In December, 1835, the Board informed him that they would permit him to continue his lectures during that session at the hour which he had announced, but that this privilege would not be further continued. In November, 1836, Dr. Macartney persisted in lecturing at 3 o’clock. He was ordered by the Board to lecture at another hour, and this order was conveyed also to the College of Physicians. Dr. Macartney persisted; and the Board took the advice of counsel as to their powers, and, as a result, they ordered the Anatomy House to be closed from 3 to 4 o’clock. In the end the Professor yielded. But another cause of dispute soon rose. In April, 1836, the Board received a letter from the Registrar of the School of Physic, which stated that Doctor Macartney wished to have his lectures advertised as being two in Anatomy and two in Surgery each week. This was held by the Board to be insufficient, inasmuch as the University of Edinburgh required five lectures in each of these subjects every week, and would require from the Dublin Professors certificates to that effect. Notwithstanding the remonstrance of the Provost and Senior Fellows, Doctor Macartney persisted in his advertisement. Doctor Sandes, one of the Senior Fellows, undertook at their request to write to the Professor in the hope that he would be able to induce him to change his decision, but his attempt was not followed by success. A case was laid before Mr. Pennefather, K.C., and as a result of his opinion, on November 26, 1836, Doctor Macartney was required to deliver five lectures in each week at one o’clock during the session. On July 13, 1837, he resigned the Professorship—four years before his tenure of office would otherwise have expired.

In consequence of his quarrel with the authorities of Trinity College, all Doctor Macartney’s valuable collection of preparations became the property of the University of[109] Cambridge. That learned body agreed with Macartney that he should transfer his collections to them in consideration of an annuity of £100 for a period not exceeding ten years. In making arrangements with Doctor Harrison, his successor, the Board took care to renew the understanding which they had made in 1802 with Dr. Hartigan, but which they had, through an oversight, omitted to establish on Doctor Macartney’s election—that all such preparations should become the property of the College.

It should be added, in justice to Dr. Harrison, who succeeded Macartney, and who was an excellent human anatomist and a most painstaking and attractive lecturer, that the great falling off of medical students in his time must be attributed to many causes beyond his control: first, the refusal of the Irish College of Surgeons to receive certificates of his lectures, very much through professional jealousy; secondly, the opening of large medical schools in the central parts of England, which drew away all the Welsh students who had before that time come to Dublin in considerable numbers, and the opening of the Ledwich School of Medicine in Dublin; and thirdly, to the institution of the Queen’s Colleges in Belfast, Cork, and Galway, which retained in those towns the students in Medicine who had previously been in the habit of coming to Dublin for lectures.

The old Anatomy House, situated between the College Park and the Fellows’ Garden, was a small and inconvenient building. It became altogether unsuited to the numbers attending Doctor Macartney’s classes. In 1815 space was made for them by the removal of the wax models from the room in which they had been placed to that over it, and a small building was erected in the Fellows’ Garden adjacent to the old house. This was but a temporary expedient, for we find that in 1820 the floor of the lecture-room was reported to be in a dangerous condition, and the Board directed that, in future, lectures in Anatomy and Chemistry should be delivered in the public lecture-room in No. 22 of the Library Square. A committee was appointed to arrange for a new site for the Medical School. That which was at first fixed upon was at the east side of the Fellows’ Garden, between the old Anatomy House and Nassau Street; but on further consideration it was changed to the ground, hitherto the Bowling Green, at the remote extremity of the College Park. On April 1, 1823, estimates were laid before the Board for the building of an anatomical and chemical theatre on the above site. The estimates ranged between £3,980 and £5,350, and a contract was made for the work. Macartney seems to have taken a great interest in the selecting of the site. Thus we find him writing to the Registrar, Dr. Phipps, from Newry, in May, 1822:—

And while the building was being erected he wrote about the light, sending the following characteristic letter to the Board (29th March, 1823):—

These Medical School buildings were in use from 1825 for more than fifty years. When of late years the number of medical students increased so largely, and it was found that this latter building was altogether unsuited for the modern requirements of the school, the present chemical laboratory and dissecting-room were erected, and a histological laboratory and physiological lecture-room were added. In 1884 a bone-room, a preparation room, and private laboratories were built. In the same year the new chemical theatre was opened, and in the following year the new anatomical theatre was completed, which is fitted for a class of 230 students. Since that time the entire of the new great Medical Schools have been finished, which, in addition to Professors’ rooms and lecture-rooms, contain a fine chamber specially fitted up for the great pathological collection originally purchased from the late Doctor Robert Smith, whose lectures as Professor of Surgery had a large share in the great recent success of the school. This collection has been largely added to by the indefatigable labours of his[111] successor, Doctor Edward H. Bennett. The anatomy and chemistry lecture-rooms of 1824 were completely removed, in order to make a space for part of the present range of buildings, which have been completed at a cost of over £20,000.

In a lecture delivered in 1837, the Professor of the Practice of Physic (Doctor Lendrick) attributed to Provost Bartholomew Lloyd the improvements which were even at that time beginning to be effected in the medical education of the members of the College. “The candidate for a medical degree,” he said, “no longer finishes his medical education in a single year, nor is he compelled to complete a septennial period of (perhaps) idleness before being permitted to practise his profession.” In the years 1832-42, inclusive, the average number of degrees of Bachelor of Medicine annually conferred by the University was 18. In the next decade this number fell to 11·7. After the great improvements in the medical education and the appointment of more attractive lecturers, this number rapidly increased. In the decade 1872-1881 the average was 39, in the following ten years the annual average was 43·6, being nearly four times that of forty years before the present time.

During the first half of the present century the University conferred degrees in Medicine only. The Irish College of Surgeons, towards the end of that period, refused to recognise the lectures delivered in the Medical School of Trinity College as a part of the professional education required for a surgical diploma, although two of the Trinity College Professors had previously occupied a similar position in the College of Surgeons’ School. The University of Dublin was consequently, in 1851, obliged to institute for their medical graduates a diploma or license in Surgery. This they did, following the best legal advice, under the clause in their charter which gave them authority to grant degrees “in omnibus artibus et facultatibus.” This was followed by the institution, in 1858, of the degree of Master of Surgery. This degree was, by the Act 21 and 22 Victoria, chap. 90, recognised as a qualification for the holder to be placed in the Medical Register—a privilege which was afterwards, by the Act 23 Victoria, chap. 7, extended to diplomas or licenses in Surgery. In 1872 the degree of Bachelor of Surgery was instituted, and placed on the basis of Bachelor of Medicine. To be admitted to either of these degrees the candidate must have previously graduated in Arts, and must have spent four years in the study of Medicine and Surgery. Degrees are now given also in Obstetric Art. The University of Dublin was the first in modern times to institute degrees in Surgery, and its example has been since followed by Cambridge and other English, Irish, and Scotch Universities.

The change of opinion in the Universities with respect to the status of the profession of Surgery is well illustrated by a correspondence, which has been preserved in the College Register,[112] between the University of Cambridge and the authorities of Trinity College, Dublin. On June 30, 1804, a letter was received from the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, in which it was stated that that University had declined to consider any student who had, subsequently to his admission, practised any trade or profession whatsoever as qualified for a degree, and consequently had refused this to Frederick Thackeray, who, since the time of his admission as an undergraduate, had been constantly engaged in the practice of surgery. The Provost and Senior Fellows, in reply, informed the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge that, after consideration of his letter, they had agreed to adopt the same regulation.

In the early part of this century, before Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital was erected, great difficulty was experienced in the clinical instruction of the medical students. In 1800 the Governors of Stevens’ Hospital permitted Dr. Crampton to give reports of medical cases under his care in the Hospital for the winter six months to matriculated medical students, and to none others. Attendance on these lectures was required for medical degrees. In 1804 clinical lectures by Dr. Whitley Stokes at the Meath Hospital were considered to be adequate for this purpose. In 1806, attendance for six months with Doctor Crampton at Stevens’ Hospital was sanctioned by the College of Physicians as adequate for a medical degree. On the completion in 1808 of the west wing of Dun’s Hospital, which had been commenced in 1803, the clinical instruction connected with the School of Physic was given in the wards and lecture-rooms of the Hospital; and in 1835 candidates for medical degrees were required to present a certificate of one year’s attendance at this institution. Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital was originally intended for medical cases only, but in 1864 the College of Physicians, which had hitherto occupied the central position of the building as a library and Convocation Hall, transferred this part of the building to the Governors of the Hospital, and it was enlarged and changed into a medico-chirurgical institution for the complete instruction of the students both in Medicine and Surgery. Attendance at this hospital is no longer compulsory on the candidates for degrees; nine other Dublin hospitals are joined with it, and the student may, if he wishes, receive his clinical teaching in any of these.

In the early part of the century, Trinity College for a short time granted diplomas in Medicine to matriculated students who were not students in Arts, but who attended the same lectures and passed the same examinations as were required of Bachelors of Medicine. This system prevailed up to 1823, when the Board received a letter from the College of Physicians in London, in which it was stated that that College did not consider such a diploma as sufficient to warrant them to grant an examination for a license to practise physic in England. The issue of these diplomas was then discontinued. For a short period the degree of Bachelor of Medicine[113] was granted to students who had completed two years’ study in Arts, but this was found to be so unsatisfactory, that the University decided that no one should be admitted to a degree in Medicine or in Surgery who had not previously graduated as Bachelor of Arts.

As to the method of conducting examinations for degrees in Medicine, we gather some curious information from a letter which the College of Physicians sent to the Provost and Senior Fellows in October, 1814, in which they informed the Board that they had ordered the King’s Professor not to be present at any examination for medical degrees in the University in which any question may be put, or answer received, in the English language. The Registrar was directed to write to the Regius Professor of Physic (Dr. Hill) to inquire whether these examinations were conducted in Latin. In reply, Dr. Hill assured the Board that he would not, under any circumstances, examine in English. It may be conjectured that the newly-elected Professor of Anatomy (Mr. Macartney), who was not a University man, broke through the old rule as to the language in which he examined.

The great growth of medical and surgical studies in the University may be gathered from the number of the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine which have been conferred at different periods of the present century. In nearly all cases, students of the University who now graduate in Medicine take also degrees in Surgery and the Obstetric Art. The number of Medical Matriculations for the last three years has been as follows:—1889—Students in Arts, 55, Externs, 28; 1890—Students in Arts, 61, Externs, 26; 1891—Students in Arts, 100, Externs, 28. During the five years previous to 1889 these numbers averaged—Students in Arts, 62; Externs, 34; total of each year, 96. The religious professions of the medical students who were matriculated in 1891 were as follows:—Church of Ireland, 85; Church of England, 10; Presbyterian, 12; Roman Catholics, 12; Methodists, 6; other denominations, 3;—total, 128.

Arts Course. 1792-1892.—At the beginning of this period, and for some years after, there were four academic Terms each year, during which the students, both undergraduates and graduates, attended lectures. In each Term two days were set apart, according to the directions of the Statutes, for the general examinations of all the undergraduate classes. It was found that the increasing number of students could not be properly examined in this limited time. Application was made to the Crown for a Royal letter giving power to the Provost and Senior Fellows to increase the number of days for this purpose in each Term, and a Statute to that effect was enacted in 1792. In the following year a new and greatly improved list of the subjects for each examination in all the parts of the Undergraduate[114] Course was adopted.[102] At the same time, a scheme was devised for stimulating the study of the Greek and Latin Classics, and for extending the cultivation of Latin Composition, both in prose and verse, by special prizes at these examinations.[103] The subjects for the examination for admission to the College were also carefully re-modelled and set out for the use of schools; and in 1794 a well-devised system of examinations and of prizes for proficiency in Hebrew was instituted. Yet at this period there were no special lectures for advanced students, either in Mathematics or in Classics. The dull and the clever student were taught together, both at the public lectures and by the College Tutor; and at the Term Examinations all the students in each division were taken together, the Examiner having at the same time, in a very limited number of hours, to satisfy himself of the progress which each undergraduate had made in his studies, to distinguish between the idle and the diligent, between the badly and the well-prepared, and at the same time to pick out and reward the best answerer in each division of about forty students.

The first earnest attempt to provide Classical instruction of a higher order for the better class of students was devised by Provost Kearney in 1800. Special Classical Lectures were arranged to be given by the ablest scholars among the Fellows twice a-week, at 7 a.m. The first special Lecturers appointed for this purpose were—Dr. Miller in Greek, and Mr. Walker in Latin. These lectures appear to have been instituted for the purpose of advancing the classical studies of such graduates as intended to devote themselves to the instruction of boys in schools; for it was arranged, at the same time, that every graduate, who should appear to the Provost and Senior Fellows to merit such encouragement, was to be entitled to a certificate under the College Seal testifying that he was “qualified to instruct youth in the grammatical principles, the classical idioms, and the prosody of the Greek and Latin languages.” The salary of each of these Lecturers was fixed at £40 annually. In 1804, Dr. Miller was succeeded by Mr. Kyle as Lecturer in Greek, and Mr. Walker by Mr. Nash as Lecturer in Latin. In 1801 the Professor of Oratory was authorised to give prizes for excellent answering at the lectures delivered by him and his assistants; and, in order to stimulate the study of the Hebrew language at school, prizes for good answering in that subject, at the monthly entrance examinations, were instituted; and in order to encourage further the study of composition, both in Greek, Latin, and English Prose and Verse, in 1805 the Vice-Chancellor assigned that portion of the fees for Degrees which was then payable to him, to form a[115] fund for prizes, to be given at the time of the Commencements, for the best compositions in each branch. In 1808 Catechetical Lectures and Examinations in Holy Scripture for the two Freshmen classes on the basis of the ordinary Term Examinations were first instituted, and, at the same time, regular weekly instruction by the Clerical Fellows in a fixed course of Holy Scripture and religious knowledge was arranged. On the same occasion Algebra was for the first time made a part of the Undergraduate Course, the only Mathematics which all the students had been taught before that time being four books of the Elements of Euclid.

In order to stimulate the more advanced students to an increased pursuit of Mathematical Physics, Dr. Bartholomew Lloyd was appointed to deliver lectures on Mechanics at a salary of £100 annually, on the condition that he should resign his claims to any other Professorship, Lectureship, or Assistant’s place, except that of Catechetical Lecturer. In 1815 a new scheme of Mathematical Lectures was promulgated. The following distribution of the work to be done by the Professor and his assistants was arranged by the Provost and Senior Fellows:—

The programme of the subjects of these lectures shows that there was a large advance in the mathematical education of the students made at this time. Analytical Geometry and Trigonometry were taught to the Honour men among the undergraduates, and the Differential and Integral Calculus and the higher branches of Mathematics were expounded by the Professor of Mathematics to the candidates for Fellowship. Hitherto the mathematical studies of the members of the College were mainly geometrical. The great start in analytical science, which has developed itself so largely in the University, seems to date from this time, and is due very much to the influence of Dr. Bartholomew Lloyd, who had in 1813 been appointed to the Chair of Mathematics. It was not until 1830 that a similar progress was made in the study of Mixed Mathematics. We find that in November of that year a committee, consisting of the Professors of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, with[116] Dr. Wall, was appointed to recommend to the Board a proper course of Mixed Mathematics, and they were instrumental in introducing the Mechanics of Poisson into the subjects for examination for the higher mathematical honours. A small but important improvement in the existing method of conducting the Term Examinations of ordinary students was made at the same time. Hitherto some of the classes were submitted to be tested by the same Junior Fellow in Science and in Classics. In 1831 it was decided that these branches of studies should be judged by separate examiners in every case. At this time there was no special examination for the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Senior Sophister students who answered in an unsatisfactory manner at the Michaelmas Term Examination were “sent to the Regent House” to be examined.

In 1807 it was decreed that every student who is “cautioned to the Regent House” shall be examined in every part of the Undergraduate Course for which he has got a mediocriter at his last examination. It was not until October, 1838, that this examination in the Regent House was formally discontinued, although it had fallen into disuse. It was then arranged that one vix mediocriter for the B.A. degree should subject the candidate to another examination.

This is the suitable occasion upon which to mention in detail the great services which the mild energy and enlightened views of Dr. Bartholomew Lloyd performed in the reformation of the studies and the literary work of Trinity College. To no one man during the present century does the University owe so much. A native of the County of Wexford, he was elected a Fellow in 1796, and after a service of twenty years as College Tutor, which he discharged with zeal and ability, he was co-opted to a Senior Fellowship in 1816, and he was appointed to the Provostship in 1831. Dr. Lloyd held the Professorship of Mathematics from 1813 to 1822, when he exchanged this chair for that of Natural Philosophy. He occupied the latter office until he was made Provost, and he was thus for eighteen years engaged in the direction of the highest studies of the most advanced classes in the branches of Pure and Mixed Mathematics. He quickly saw the need of introducing a more complete knowledge of the more advanced analytic methods which prevailed on the Continent, and he compiled a course of lectures, as we have seen, in order to introduce them to his class; and partly by his lectures and partly by his writings[104] he completely revolutionised the mathematical and physical studies of the University, and was the means of directing the researches of the[117] higher class of thinkers to the methods which have rendered the Dublin school of mathematicians so celebrated in Europe.

Shortly after his appointment to the Chair of Natural Philosophy, he published his well-known treatise on Mechanical Philosophy, which supplied a want widely felt by students of that science in this and the sister country, and which was the means of introducing to them the researches of the French labourers in the field of Applied Mathematics.

During the six years of his Provostship he was the means of effecting very large and beneficial changes in the College. Up to 1831 all the important Professorships were held by Senior Fellows, and in most cases (except in those on the foundation of Erasmus Smith) they were held, like other College offices, as the result of an annual election. Dr. Lloyd saw the necessity of setting apart some of the Junior Fellows for the fixed and exclusive work of Professorial study and teaching. For this purpose he influenced the College Board to set apart three of the Junior Fellows, whose tastes were specially directed to these particular studies, to the Professorships of Mathematics, of Natural Philosophy, and the office of Archbishop King’s Lectureship in Divinity. Mr. M‘Cullagh was elected to the first of these chairs, Mr. Humphrey Lloyd to the second, and Dr. O’Brien to the third. They were freed from all the distracting cares of College Tutors, and the salaries were fixed at something rather below the average value of a Junior Fellowship. The tenure of the Professorship was terminated by the co-option of the holder to a place among the Senior Fellows. The Fellowship Examination was improved by a Royal Statute which was then obtained, and which enabled the Professors of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy to be called up to undertake the examination in the courses belonging to their respective chairs.

Provost Bartholomew Lloyd saw also the necessity of fostering the study of Mental and Moral Philosophy among the members of the College. Prior to 1833 the study of these sciences was joined with that of Mathematics and Physics under the common designation of Science. But for the attainment of prizes and other University distinctions, the Mathematical part of the examination placed that of the Logical and Ethical portions of the curriculum completely in the background. In 1833 a new system of awarding Honours and Medals at the Degree Examination was instituted, and in addition to the distinctions in Mathematics and Classics, which had been in existence since the year 1815, a third course was fixed for a separate examination in Ethics and Logics, and gold and silver medals were awarded for distinguished answering in these subjects, in addition to the similar rewards for merit under the designation of Senior and Junior Moderatorships in Mathematics and in Classics. This[118] arrangement was carried out in 1834, and the first name in the list of Ethical Moderators of that year was that of William Archer Butler—a brilliant and afterwards most distinguished man, both as a writer and a preacher, who was taken away by death from the service of the Church and of the University at the early age of thirty-four.

Provost Lloyd had long seen the necessity of a separate Professorship of the Moral Sciences, and in 1837 he induced the Governing Body of the University to found it. On the day on which it was instituted Archer Butler was appointed to the Professorship, which he held for ten years, much to the benefit of the class of thinkers to whom these studies were interesting. By these arrangements Dr. Lloyd may be well said to be the founder of the distinguished school of Metaphysics which has taken such deep root in the College, and has borne much fruit. In 1850, mainly through the exertions of his son, Dr. Humphrey Lloyd, a fourth Moderatorship in Experimental Physics was founded.[105] But it was not only with the advancement of higher class education that Provost Lloyd was engaged: he effected enormous improvements in the lectures and examinations of the undergraduates at large. To this he was stimulated by a remarkably thoughtful and searching pamphlet, written in 1828 by Dr. Richard MacDonnell, who was then a Junior Fellow, and had an experience of twenty years of the great defects in the method of conducting the Term Examinations. Most of the suggestions in this pamphlet were adopted in course of time. Before the year 1833 the work of the College was distributed over four separate Terms, at the beginning of each of which the students were examined in the subjects in which they had been instructed during the previous Term. These Terms were of unequal and variable length. The Easter Term was far too short for the appointed course of study; and the Trinity Term, depending on the movable feasts, was often merely nominal. In order to obviate these inconveniences, the Provost and Senior Fellows applied for and obtained a Royal Statute reducing the number of Academic Terms from four to three, and fixing them so that they would be generally of equal length. The hours of examination for each class of students were altered so as to meet the change of social habits; and while it was formerly the[119] custom to have the first part of the examination of each day to continue from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., followed by a breakfast at the chambers of the College Tutors, in 1833 the change was made to the present hours of examination—from 9.30 to 12 in the morning of the first day, and from 10 to 12 in the morning of the second day of each Term Examination. The subjects of the Undergraduate Course were in the same year submitted to a very wide-reaching review.

In the year 1793, great improvements had been made in the Classical Course set out for the studies of the undergraduates. These were, it is said, largely due to the influence of Dr. Thomas Elrington. On that occasion the works of the great Greek historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, were brought for the first time under the attention of the classical students in Trinity College; but, during the forty years which followed, little change had been made in the classical authors which were read by the undergraduates. In 1833, for the first time, a distinct and shorter course was arranged for students who were not candidates for Honours, while a larger portion, generally of the same authors, was set out for candidates for Honours, and a wider course of classical studies was appointed for those who competed for Classical Moderatorships at the Degree Examination. Similar arrangements were adopted for the students in the Mathematical and Physical portion of their curriculum.

Before this time the students of the same division, of from thirty to forty men, were examined together, and they had no opportunity of competing with other men of their year in the Sciences; and in classical studies at the Scholarship Examination only, at which they rarely competed until the third year. It was now arranged that those who answered well at each Term Examination in Science or in Classics should be returned by the Examiner to compete at a more searching examination in an extended course, at which all the best men in the class should be examined together, on days separate from those of the Term Examinations, by three Examiners in Science and three in Classics set apart for that purpose; and so by this means each student was able to measure himself each Term, not only with those who happened to be in his own division, but with all the men of his year; and in this way the undergraduates were incited to continued study by healthy competition. Premiums in books, which were formerly awarded at each examination to the best answerer in each division, but which could be obtained only once in the year, were confined to that of the Michaelmas Term, at which there were two orders of prizes, first and second—the number of the first rank prizes being restricted to one fortieth of the class, and that of the second to one twentieth.

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There was another and a very important improvement in the teaching of the undergraduates which Provost Lloyd was mainly instrumental in effecting. Hitherto the lectures of each Tutor were given to his own pupils. He was supposed to instruct all the men of each of the three Junior Classes at the least for an hour every day. Each Tutor received the fees of his own pupils, and those who had a large number in what was technically called his “chamber” had a considerable income, but others who were not so popular had but a scanty support.

In 1835 the Tutors, under the persuasion of the Provost, agreed to adopt a new system. The fees paid by the pupils were put into a common fund, and the Tutors were divided into three grades, in the order of seniority, and their dividends were fixed, not in relation to the number of their pupils, but of the standing of the Tutor among the Fellows; each of them was thus assured of a certain and increasing income—the only advantage accruing to the Tutor from the number of his pupils arose from the arrangement that, when he ceased from any cause to be a Tutor, the payments of the Tutorial fees of his existing pupils, as long as they remained in College, instead of being paid into the common fund, were paid to the Tutor himself or to his representatives.

A corresponding division of Tutorial labour, as far as lectures were concerned, was effected at the same time. Each Tutor was required to lecture only two hours every day, except on Saturday; and the efficacy of the lectures was greatly increased, and the regularity of the attendance of the lecturer in the instruction of his class guarded by stringent rules. Every student in the two Freshman Classes was now lectured for two hours instead of one; under the old arrangement the lecture in Classics was often a mere form, not always observed; by the new system an hour’s lecture in Latin was secured to each undergraduate in these classes. The Junior Sophisters were lectured by the Tutors in Mathematical Physics and Astronomy only. In addition to the Tutorial Lectures, the undergraduates attended, as they did before, the Public Science Lectures, the hours of the lecture being changed from 6.15 to 7.30 a.m., and the lectures of the assistants to the Greek Professor on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, which were delivered at 9 a.m. Again, there was a great improvement effected with respect to the attendance of the undergraduates at Tutorial Lectures. At this time these lectures were not obligatory; Terms were not kept by attendance at them, nor did the College keep any record of them. A student did not advance in any way his College standing by seeking the instruction given by his College Tutor. No cognizance was taken of irregularity, either on the part of the lecturer or of the lectured. A Tutor was often absent from his class, and the class was oftener absent from the Tutor. An important rule[121] was adopted to counteract this: a weekly return was required to be made to the Tutorial Committee of the attendance upon his lectures, which was to be transmitted to the Provost, and the Tutor had an opportunity of judging of the regularity of the studies of his pupils, who were, according to this inter-tutorial system, in attendance on the lectures of other Tutors. In a very few years the lectures were much better arranged, some of the Tutors being set apart to lecture the candidates for Honours in each class, while others devoted themselves to the greater drudgery of instructing the mere pass-men.

In order to secure the diligent discharge of the duties assigned to each Tutor, the Tutorial Committee was bound to employ deputies to lecture in his place in case of his failure from any cause, and to remunerate the deputies out of the income of the defaulting Tutor.

That this division of labour added very much to the ease of the conscientious Tutors is quite evident. Doctor Romney Robinson, who was a Fellow and Tutor under the old system, wrote as follows in the preface to his treatise on Mechanics, published in 1820:—“The Fellows of Trinity College can scarcely be expected to devote themselves to any work of research, or even of compilation; constantly employed in the duties of tuition, which harass the mind more than the most abstract studies, they can have but little inclination at the close of the day to commence a new career of labour.... In the present case the author happened to be less occupied than most of his brethren, yet he was engaged from seven to eight hours daily in academical duties, for the year during which he composed this work.”

Had Bartholomew Lloyd lived, he would no doubt have originated many other improvements in the Arts Course, and in the other studies of the College which have been effected since his time. He was, however, suddenly removed by death from his exertions in reforming the College, on the 24th November, 1837, at the age of 65, having held the Provostship for only six years. He was succeeded by Dr. Franc Sadleir, and during the fourteen years of his mild sway the improvements originated by his predecessor were gradually carried into effect. Dr. Richard MacDonnell succeeded him in the office of Provost. He had been long engaged in the work of the College as an able and painstaking Tutor, and a vigorous administrator of the College Estates. Dr. MacDonnell had long seen the necessity of large reforms in the education of the students, and had ably pointed out the abuses which required to be remedied, in the pamphlet which has been already mentioned. Most of these defects he lived to see corrected, and the most important of which were removed when he was himself Provost.

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One of the events which, beyond question, stimulated intellectual exertions among the undergraduates in the University of Dublin, was the opening of the appointments in the Civil Service of India, and of the Army and Navy Medical Service, to public competition in 1855. A number of the ablest students had a new career opened to them, and they were afforded an opportunity of measuring their attainments with students of similar calibre from Oxford and Cambridge. The course of study was at once widened. Classical studies received an impetus which roused the teachers from their old routine. The English Language and Literature, and Modern History, as well as foreign languages, became important parts of Collegiate education. The heads of the College at once saw the necessity of largely remodelling the instruction given to the undergraduates. The Greek Professorship was very soon separated from the offices which were restricted to Senior Fellows; a Professor was elected from among the Tutors under the same arrangements which had been carried out in the cases of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics. He was enabled to give his entire time to the duties of his chair. Similar arrangements were made as to the Professorships of Geology and of Experimental Physics. A Professor of Arabic and Hindostanee was established, and soon after one of Sanskrit as well. The Professorship of Oratory was virtually changed into one of English Language and Literature. The immediate effect of these changes was at once visible in the great and remarkable success of the Dublin candidates at the open competitions for the Indian Civil Service and the Army Medical Services. In the first seven years, fifty-three succeeded from the Dublin University for the former and twenty-nine for the latter appointments. The new regulations with regard to the study of English Literature which were made in 1855 have produced very widely felt effects in the intellectual life of the University. It was not for the first time that a want of the means of being acquainted with this important branch of knowledge was felt by the students; and in order to remedy it, in October, 1814, during the Provostship of Dr. Thomas Elrington, the Board directed that lectures in the English Language and Literature should be regularly delivered by the assistant to the Professor of Oratory, and elaborate rules were made as to the means of carrying this course into effect, but it seems to have ended in failure; at any rate, during the next forty years there was no public instruction given to the students in this important subject. The plan adopted in 1855 of making History and English Literature a distinct branch, in which honours and medals at the Degree Examination can be obtained, aided by the special prizes which are given for proficiency in these subjects during the Undergraduate Course, has created a widely felt[123] interest among the students, and has eventuated in the spread of a refined taste for these subjects among the members of the College. The subjects in which the student can distinguish himself at the B.A. Degree Examination have now been increased to seven—1, Mathematics, pure and mixed; 2, Classics; 3, Mental and Moral Science; 4, Experimental Physics; 5, Natural Sciences; 6, History, Law, and Political Economy; 7, Foreign Languages and Literature. Frequent and well-considered changes in the courses for the ordinary students, and in the subjects read by the candidates for Honours, have been made since that period, and they have been on the whole successful.

One of the most marked developments in the intellectual life of the College during the present century has been the growth of the great Classical School for which it is now so well known. This may be mainly attributed to the separation of Classics from the other branches which form the subject of competition for Fellowships. A keen competition among Classical men for those highly-coveted prizes has been the consequence. The tone of Classical Scholarship has been raised among the best of the candidates for University Honours, and some of the ablest men devote themselves to stimulate the knowledge of the Greek and Latin Languages and Literature among the students. There has, moreover, a higher Critical School grown up in the University, limited in numbers, being composed of Classical Graduates who are engaged in reading for Fellowship, or who have competed for the Berkeley Medals in Greek, or for the Vice-Chancellor’s Medals in Latin. This school, exclusive of the Fellows and Professors, never numbers more than ten or twelve in the College at one time, but from the ability and classical culture of its members it has more influence in giving a tone to the studies which are pursued in the University than its numbers would at first sight render probable. The causes of the growth of this school are—1st, the Critical Examination for the highest Classical distinctions; 2nd, the fact that there is an examination for Fellowship every year; 3rd, the annual publication of Hermathena; 4th, the publication of critical editions of the Classics by the Fellows of the College.

We can trace the growth of the Mathematical studies to the wonderful genius of MacCullagh and Hamilton, and to the labours of Townsend, of Jellett, of Roberts, and of others who have passed away. Fortunately for the College, all the creators of the revived School of Classics are still spared to the College, and their names are therefore not here mentioned.

Another vast improvement effected was in the method of conducting all examinations in the College. Prior to 1835 they were (with the solitary exceptions of those for gold medals at the B.A. Degree Examinations) altogether oral. The examination for Fellowships was a[124] public vivâ voce trial of the candidates, and in the Latin language, without any use whatever of writing. Greek authors were translated into Latin, and Latin authors were interpreted in the same language. This continued to be the practice down to the year 1853. Now, all this is changed. The Fellowship Examination, which is spread over a much longer period, is mostly conducted in writing, although there is in every course a public examination of the candidates vivâ voce and in English. The examinations for Honours (except in Classical subjects) are now altogether written, and at the ordinary Term Examinations students are tested orally and by written questions by separate Examiners. At the general Term Examination at the end of the second year, and at the B.A. Degree Examination at the end of the fourth year, the candidates are arranged according to their answering in three classes, and those whose marks do not entitle them to be classed, but who satisfy the Senior Lecturer, are passed without any mark of distinction. This method of examination for the B.A. degree was adopted in July, 1842, at the suggestion of the then Senior Lecturer, Dr. Singer, afterwards Bishop of Meath. It was found to work in such a satisfactory manner that, in 1845, it was adopted at the other public University Examination, at the end of the second or Senior Freshman year.

Engineering School.—The University of Dublin was the first to establish a course of education and degrees in the art of Civil Engineering. Shortly after the construction of railways in Ireland was undertaken, there was a necessity found for properly educated men to carry on the required work; and the plan of an Engineering School originated with Doctor Humphrey Lloyd, Professor of Natural Philosophy; Doctor MacCullagh, Professor of Mathematics; and Doctor Luby, Assistant Professor of Natural Philosophy. These three gentlemen laid a memorial before the Provost and Senior Fellows on April 3rd, 1841, recommending the foundation of a Professorship of Civil Engineering, and giving a plan for the studies of the proposed school for teaching that branch of education. This was finally approved by the Board early in the following June. The length of the course as first proposed was two years, and on July 9th, 1842, Mr. M‘Neill (afterwards Sir John M‘Neill) was elected to the Professorship. It was arranged that the business of the School of Engineering should be conducted by five lecturers—viz., the assistant to the Professor of Mathematics, the Professor of Natural Philosophy and his assistant, together with a Professor of Chemistry and of Geology applied to the art of Construction, and a Professor of the practice of Engineering.

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Mr. M‘Neill was so completely occupied with his large works in the construction of railways that he could give only a general superintendence to the school, and on the 5th of November, 1842, Mr. Henry Rennie, formerly a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, was appointed Assistant Professor and Lecturer. After holding the office for two years he resigned, and Mr. Thomas Oldham, B.A., was appointed in his room. Doctor Apjohn was elected to the joint Professorships of Chemistry and Geology; but in 1843 it was found necessary to appoint a distinct Professor of Geology, and on December 30th, 1843, Mr. John Phillips, the eminent geologist, was elected to this chair at a salary of £200, to be increased to £400 on the death of Doctor Whitley Stokes, then an old man, which took place in 1845. In the latter year Mr. Phillips resigned the Professorship, and he was succeeded by Mr. Thomas Oldham, afterwards Director of the Geological Survey of India. In 1846 Mr. Samuel Downing was appointed to the Professorship of Engineering, which he continued to hold until his death in 1882.

It was soon found that a two years’ course in Engineering was insufficient, and in 1845 it was extended to one of three years. The studies of the first year are in the main theoretical; in the second and third years they are practical—viz., drawing and office work, levelling, surveying and general engineering, and chemistry as taught in the laboratory.

At first, diplomas in Engineering were granted to students who had passed successfully through this school. In 1860 it was resolved by the University Senate that in lieu of these the license of the University should be conferred publicly at the Commencements; and in 1872 it was further resolved that the degree of Bachelor in Civil Engineering should be created, and that it should be conferred on Bachelors of Arts who were entitled to the license by having completed the full course in Engineering. From the year 1860 to 1891 inclusive, 352 students obtained degrees and licenses in Engineering. The degree of Master of Engineering is conferred on those who, after taking the degree of Bachelor of Engineering, have practised for three years in the work of their profession.

At each final examination in Engineering, special certificates are awarded to students who answer in a distinguished manner in the following subjects:—I. Practical Engineering; II. Mechanical and Experimental Physics; III. Mining, Chemistry, Geology, and Mineralogy.

School of Law.—The lectures of the Professor of Feudal and English Law remain very much as they were in 1792. The Professorship of Civil Law was then and for many years afterwards held by a Senior Fellow, often by a clergyman; the duties were nearly[126] nominal, and the salary small. In the year 1850, however, the Board, being anxious to found an effective Law School in Dublin, decided that in future the Professorship of Civil Law should be held only by a Doctor of Laws, and a Barrister of at least six years standing; and as such he was required to regulate the courses and lectures in the Civil Law class, and bound to deliver at least twelve lectures in each Term.

The Law School of the University of Dublin is under the control of the Provost and Senior Fellows of Trinity College, who, however, act in concurrence with the Benchers of the King’s Inns.

The Regius Professor of Laws delivers lectures on Roman Law, Jurisprudence, and International Law. The Regius Professor of Feudal and English Law delivers lectures on the subject of Real Property; a third professor, whose chair was founded in 1888 by Mr. Richard T. Reid for the study of “Penal Legislation, including principles of prevention, repression, and reformation,” delivers lectures on—(1) Penal Legislation; (2) Constitutional and Criminal Law; (3) the Law of Evidence. These lectures are open to the public and King’s Inns students, who have credit for the Term’s lectures, and those who have credit for the academic year have their names reported to the Benchers.

The Law Professors also examine all candidates for degrees in Law. These degrees, like those in the other professional schools, can only be obtained after a course of legal study or strict examinations in Law.

The College Historical Society, which was formed in 1770, had in 1794 come into collision with the Governing Body of the College, in consequence of the action of many of the Graduates of some years’ standing, who, though they were no longer subject to College discipline, continued to be active members of the Society, and acted without respect to the orders of the Board. The Society was consequently excluded from the College, and a new Association of the Students, under the same name, was organised. Their meetings for debate were permitted by the Board, on the distinct understanding that they would not choose for discussion any question of modern politics, or admit into their proceedings any allusion to such subjects. They continued to meet in the old rooms, now the Common Room of the Fellows and Professors, until 1815, when they again got into trouble with the College authorities, who insisted that they should expel, without discussion, two of the[127] members of the Society whose conduct in its debates was disapproved of by the Board. The discussions upon the private business of the Society became imbued by party spirit, and the younger members, who exceeded in number the seniors, who had greater experience and wisdom, took upon themselves the management of the Historical Society, and it became continually engaged in angry debates. The Board consequently insisted that Junior Sophisters should be no longer admitted as members, and ordered a committee of five to be appointed to settle all private business of the Society. Four of the five refused to act, and the result was that on the 5th of February, 1815, the last debate was held. It is a strange coincidence that, shortly afterwards, similar difficulties arose between the Cambridge Union and the Cambridge University authorities. In the month of March, 1817,[106] Mr. Whewell was President. Dr. Wood, at that time Vice-Chancellor, took with him the Proctors, together with a Tutor from Trinity College, and another from St. John’s: they proceeded to the place of meeting for debate, at the Red Lion Inn. The Proctors were sent into the room to desire the members to disperse, and to meet no more. The President requested the Proctors to retire, in order that the Society might discuss the subject. This they refused to do. At last a deputation, consisting of Mr. Whewell (afterwards Master of Trinity), Mr. Thirlwall (afterwards Bishop of St. David’s), and Mr. Sheridan, was permitted to have an interview with the Vice-Chancellor. The deputation urged their claims strongly, but the Vice-Chancellor insisted that, while they might conclude the present debate, they should not meet again for a similar purpose.

After frequent petitions to the Board, supported by the Junior Fellows, the Historical Society was again, on the 16th November, 1843, permitted to meet within the walls of the College, on which occasion William Connor Magee, Scholar, afterwards Archbishop of York, delivered, as Auditor of the Society, an opening address of remarkable eloquence and of great promise, which produced an effect such as has never yet been equalled in the Society. Since that period the College Historical Society continues to meet regularly for debate within the College walls. Junior Sophisters are again admitted as members, but the subjects for discussion must always, in the first instance, receive the approval of the Board. The Society has been allowed, moreover, to have Reading and Committee Rooms within the College. During the half-century which has elapsed since the restoration of the Society, perfect harmony has existed between the members and the Governing Body of the College.

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The Philosophical Society.—During the year 1842, some of the students of Trinity College whose age and reputation did not warrant their seeking admission into the leading scientific societies of Dublin, but who were anxious to improve themselves in knowledge and in the art of composition, combined to form a Society called the Dublin Philosophical Society, the object of which was the reading of papers on scientific and literary subjects, and the discussion of these papers by the members after they were read. The first meeting was held in November, 1842, in a room in Marlborough Street, and the first volume of their transactions was published at the end of 1843.

In the beginning of 1845, after the Historical Society had been received back within the walls of the College, the Committee sought permission to have the use of one of the lecture-rooms for the purposes of their meetings. This was granted. The name of the Society was changed into “The Dublin University Philosophical Society,” and new rules were adopted, which were required by the closer connection of the Society with Trinity College. The members were nearly all graduates, and although junior students were by no means excluded from the Society, few of them were disposed to join in the proceedings. The Society continued to exist for some years, but the members, being generally senior men, were too soon called away from aiding in its meetings by the requirements of professional or official duties. This Society published five volumes of Transactions, containing papers by young men, many of whom afterwards became distinguished in science and literature.

The Society having fallen too much into the hands of graduates, in the year 1854 the undergraduates, feeling the want of a similar organisation which should give them free scope for their own literary exertions, formed a new Society called “The Undergraduate Philosophical Society,” the ruling body of which was composed of students who had not taken their B.A. degrees. The new Society became rapidly popular among the students of the College, and its numbers largely increased. The first Philosophical Society having been at length discontinued, that which was managed by the undergraduates took its place as the University Philosophical Society. All undergraduates are now admissible as members, and at present it so happens that the majority of the officers of the Society and the Committee are graduates.

At the first, the spirit which actuated the former Philosophical Society influenced its younger sister, and scientific subjects formed the main topic of discussion. After one or two sessions, essays and discussions on literary subjects were introduced, followed by poetry,[129] fiction, biography, and history; so that ultimately questions of abstract science disappeared from the proceedings of the Philosophical Society, and questions of pure science are now discussed at the meetings of the University Biological Association and the University Experimental Science Association.

The Theological Society.—Shortly after the Divinity School was placed upon its present basis, it was found that a place of meeting was required where theological students could discuss the important questions which formed the subjects to which their attention was directed. The Society was founded outside the College on November 23, 1838. Its first presidents were Rev. Doctor Singer, then a Junior Fellow, the Rev. Robert J. M‘Ghee, and the Rev. Charles M. Fleury. The Society met in a room in Upper Sackville Street, and the discussions of the members were very much confined to the Roman Catholic controversy. It was soon found necessary that the Society should be brought more under the control of the teachers in the Divinity School, and in 1860 the then Regius Professor of Divinity was appointed President; the other Professors in the Divinity School, along with the assistant Divinity teachers, were made Vice-Presidents; and since that year the Society meets in a public room in the College. Dr. Butcher, the then Regius Professor, always presided at the weekly meetings up to 1866, when he became Bishop of Meath. His successor, Dr. Salmon, gave the same unwearied attention to the Society until he became Provost, and the discussions of the Society, which now take a much wider range in Theology, are always conducted under the control of the Regius Professor, or of Archbishop King’s Lecturer in Divinity.

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Provost Baldwin held absolute sway in this University for forty-one years. His memory is well preserved here. The Bursar still dispenses the satisfactory revenues which Baldwin left to the College. None of us ever can forget the marble angels round the figure of the dying Provost on which we used to gaze during the pangs of the Examination Hall.

Baldwin died in 1758, and was succeeded by Francis Andrews, a Fellow of seventeen years’ standing. As to the scholastic acquirements of Andrews, all I can find is a statement that he was complimented by the polite Professors of Padua on the elegance and purity with which he discoursed to them in Latin. Andrews was also reputed to be a skilful lawyer. He was certainly a Privy Councillor and a prominent member of the Irish House of Commons, and his social qualities were excellent. Perhaps it was Baldwin’s example that stimulated a desire in Andrews to become a benefactor to his College. He accordingly bequeathed a sum of £3,000 and an annual income of £250 wherewith to build and endow an Astronomical Observatory in the University. The figures just stated ought to be qualified by the words of cautious Ussher (afterwards the first Professor of Astronomy), that “this money was to arise from an accumulation of a part of his property, to commence upon a particular contingency happening in his family.” The astronomical endowment was soon in jeopardy by litigation. Andrews thought he had provided for his relations by leaving to them certain leasehold interests connected with the Provost’s estate. The law courts, however, held that these interests were not at the disposal of[132] the testator, and handed them over to Hely Hutchinson, the next Provost. The disappointed relations then petitioned the Irish Parliament to redress this grievance by transferring to them the monies designed by Andrews for the Observatory. It would not be right, they contended, that the kindly intentions of the late Provost towards his kindred should be frustrated for the sake of maintaining what they described as “a purely ornamental institution.” The authorities of the College protested against this claim. Counsel were heard, and a Committee of the House made a report declaring the situation of the relations to be a hard one. Accordingly, a compromise was made, and the dispute terminated.

The selection of a site for the new Astronomical Observatory was made by the Board of Trinity College. The beautiful neighbourhood of Dublin offered a choice of excellent localities. On the north side of the Liffey an Observatory could have been admirably placed, either on the remarkable promontory of Howth or on the elevation of which Dunsink is the summit. On the south side of Dublin there are several eminences that would have been suitable: the breezy heaths at Foxrock combine all necessary conditions; the obelisk hill at Killiney would have given one of the most picturesque sites for an Observatory in the world; while near Delgany two or three other good situations could be mentioned. But the Board of those pre-railway days was naturally guided by the question of proximity. Dunsink was accordingly chosen as the most suitable site within the distance of a reasonable walk from Trinity College.

The northern boundary of the Phoenix Park approaches the little river Tolka, which winds through a succession of delightful bits of sylvan scenery, such as may be found in the wide demesne of Abbotstown and the classic shades of Glasnevin. From the banks of the Tolka, on the opposite side of the park, the pastures ascend in a gentle slope to culminate at Dunsink, where at a distance of half-a-mile from the stream, of four miles from Dublin, and at a height of 300 feet above the sea, now stands the Observatory. From the commanding position of Dunsink a magnificent view is obtained. To the east the sea is visible, while the southern prospect over the valley of the Liffey is bounded by a range of hills and mountains extending from Killiney to Bray Head, thence to the Little Sugar Loaf, the Two Rock and the Three Rock Mountains, over the flank of which the summit of the Great Sugar Loaf is just perceptible. Directly in front opens the fine valley of Glenasmole, with Kippure Mountain, while the range can be followed to its western extremity. The climate of Dunsink is well suited for astronomical observation. No doubt here, as elsewhere in Ireland, clouds are abundant, but mists or haze are comparatively unusual, and fogs are almost unknown.

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Ussher died in 1790. During his brief career at the Observatory, he observed eclipses, and is stated to have done other scientific work. The minutes of the Board declare that the infant institution had already obtained celebrity by his labours, and they urge the claims of his widow to a pension on the ground that the disease from which he died had been contracted by his nightly vigils. The Board also promised a grant of fifty guineas as a help to bring out Dr. Ussher’s sermons. They advanced twenty guineas to his widow towards the publication of his astronomical papers. They ordered his bust to be executed for the Observatory, and offered “The Death of Ussher” as the subject of a prize essay; but, so far as I can find, neither the sermons nor the papers, neither the bust nor the prize essay, ever came into being.

There was keen competition for the Chair of Astronomy, which the death of Ussher vacated. The two candidates were Rev. John Brinkley, of Caius College, Cambridge, a Senior Wrangler (born at Woodbridge, Suffolk, in 1763), and Mr. Stack, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and author of a book on Optics. A majority of the Board at first supported Stack, while Provost Hely Hutchinson and one or two others supported Brinkley. In those days the Provost had a veto at elections, so that ultimately Stack was withdrawn, and Brinkley was elected. This took place on the 11th December, 1790. The national press of the day commented on the preference shown to the young Englishman, Brinkley, over his Irish rival. An animated controversy ensued. The Provost himself condescended to enter the lists, and to vindicate his policy by a long letter in the Public Register or Freeman’s Journal, of 21st December, 1790. This letter was anonymous, but its authorship is obvious. It gives the correspondence with Maskelyne and other eminent astronomers, whose advice and guidance had been sought by the Provost. It also contends that “the transactions of the Board ought[135] not to be canvassed in the newspapers.” For this reference, as well as for much other information, I am indebted to my friend the Rev. John W. Stubbs, D.D.

The next event in the history of the Observatory was the issue of Letters Patent (32 Geo. III., A.D. 1792), in which it is recited that “We grant and ordain that there shall be for ever hereafter a Professor of Astronomy, on the foundation of Dr. Andrews, to be called and known by the name of the Royal Astronomer of Ireland.” The letters prescribe the various duties of the Astronomer, and the mode of his election. They lay down regulations as to the conduct of the astronomical work, and as to the choice of an assistant. They direct that the Provost and Senior Fellows shall make a thorough inspection of the Observatory once every year, in June or July; and this duty was first undertaken on the 5th of July, 1792. It will thus be noted that the date fixed for the celebration of the Tercentenary of the University happens to be the centenary of the first Visitation of the Observatory. The Visitors on the first occasion were—A. Murray, Matthew Young, George Hall, and John Barrett. They record that they find the buildings, books, and instruments in good condition; but the chief feature in this report, as well as in many which followed it, related to a circumstance to which we have not yet referred.

In the original equipment of the Observatory, Ussher, with the natural ambition of a founder, desired to place in it a telescope of more magnificent proportions than could be found anywhere else. The Board gave a spirited support to this enterprise, and negotiations were entered into with the most eminent instrument-maker of those days. This was Jesse Ramsden (1735-1800), famous as the improver of the sextant, as the constructor of the great Theodolite used by General Roy in the English Survey, and as the inventor of the Dividing Engine for graduating astronomical instruments. Ramsden had built for Sir George Schuckburgh the largest and most perfect Equatorial ever attempted. He had constructed mural quadrants for Padua and Verona, which elicited the wonder of astronomers, when Dr. Maskelyne declared he could detect no error in their graduation as large as two seconds and a-half. But Ramsden maintained that even better results would be obtained by superseding the entire quadrant by the circle. He obtained the means of testing this prediction when he completed a superb circle for Palermo of five feet diameter. Finding his anticipations were realised, he desired to apply the same principles on a still grander scale. Ramsden was in this mood when he met with Dr. Ussher. The enthusiasm of the Astronomer and the instrument-maker communicated itself to the Board, and a tremendous circle, to be ten feet in diameter, was forthwith projected.

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Projected, but never carried out. After Ramsden had to some extent completed a ten-foot circle, he found such difficulties that he tried a nine-foot, and this again he discarded for an eight-foot, which was ultimately accomplished, though not entirely by himself. Notwithstanding the contraction from the vast proportions originally designed, the completed instrument must still be regarded as a colossal piece of astronomical workmanship. Even at this day I do not know that any other Observatory except Dunsink can show a circle eight feet in diameter graduated all round.

I think it is Professor Piazzi Smyth who tells us how grateful he was to find a large telescope he had ordered finished by the opticians on the very day they had promised it. The day was perfectly correct; it was only the year that was wrong. A somewhat remarkable experience in this direction is chronicled by the early reports of the Visitors to the Dunsink Observatory. I cannot find the date on which the great circle was ordered from Ramsden, but it is fixed with sufficient precision by an allusion in Ussher’s paper to the Royal Irish Academy, which shows that by the 13th June, 1785, the order had been given, but that the abandonment of the ten-foot scale had not then been contemplated. It was reasonable that the Board should allow Ramsden ample time for the completion of a work at once so elaborate and so novel. It could not have been finished in a year, nor would there have been much reason for complaint if the maker had found he required two or even three years more.

Seven years gone, and still no telescope, was the condition in which the Board found matters at their first Visitation in 1792. They had, however, assurances from Ramsden that the instrument would be completed within the year; but, alas for such promises! another seven years rolled on, and in 1799 the place for the great circle was still vacant at Dunsink. Ramsden had fallen into bad health, and the Board considerately directed that “inquiries should be made.” Next year there was still no progress, so the Board were roused to threaten Ramsden with a suit at law; but the menace was never executed, for the malady of the great optician grew worse, and he died that year.

Affairs had now assumed a critical aspect, for the College had advanced much money to Ramsden during these fifteen years, and the instrument was still unfinished. An appeal was made by the Provost to Dr. Maskelyne, the Astronomer-Royal of England, for his advice and kindly offices in this emergency. Maskelyne responds—in terms calculated to allay the anxiety of the Bursar—“Mr. Ramsden has left property behind him, and the College can be in no danger of losing both their money and the instrument.” The business[137] of Ramsden was then undertaken by Berge, who proceeded to finish the great circle quite as deliberately as his predecessor. After four years Berge promised the instrument in the following August, but it did not come. Two years later (1806) the Professor complains that he can get no answer from Berge. In 1807 it is stated that Berge will send the telescope in a month. He did not; but in the next year (1808), about twenty-three years after the great circle was ordered, it was erected at Dunsink, where it is still to be seen.

The following circumstances have been authenticated by the signatures of Provosts, Proctors, Bursars, and other College dignitaries:—In 1793 the Board ordered two of the clocks at the Observatory to be sent to Mr. Crosthwaite for repairs. Seven years later, in 1800, Mr. Crosthwaite was asked if the clocks were ready. This impatience was clearly unreasonable, for even in four years more, 1804, we find the two clocks were still in hands. Two years later, in 1806, the Board determined to take vigorous action by asking the Bursar to call upon Crosthwaite. This evidently produced some effect, for in the following year, 1807, the Professor had no doubt that the clocks would be speedily returned. After eight years more, in 1815, one of the clocks was still being repaired, and so it was in 1816, which is the last record we have of these interesting timepieces. Astronomers are, however, accustomed to deal with such stupendous periods in their calculations, that even the time taken to repair a clock seems but small in comparison.

The long tenure of the Chair of Astronomy by Brinkley is divided into two nearly equal periods by the year in which the great circle was erected. Brinkley was eighteen years waiting for his telescope, and he had eighteen years more in which to use it. During the first of these periods Brinkley devoted himself to mathematical research; during the latter he became a celebrated astronomer. Brinkley’s mathematical labours procured for their author some reputation as a mathematician. They appear to be works of considerable mathematical elegance, but not indicating any great power of original thought. Perhaps it has been prejudicial to Brinkley’s fame in this direction that he was immediately followed in his chair by so mighty a genius as William Rowan Hamilton.

After the great circle had been at last erected, Brinkley was able to begin his astronomical work in earnest. Nor was there much time to lose. He was already 45 years old, a year older than was Herschel when he commenced his immortal career at Slough. Stimulated by the consciousness of having the command of an instrument of unique perfection, Brinkley loftily attempted the very highest class of astronomical research. He resolved to measure anew with his own eye and with his own hand the constants of aberration and of nutation. He[138] also strove to solve that great problem of the universe, the discovery of the distance of a fixed star.

These were noble problems, and they were nobly attacked. But to appraise with justice this work of Brinkley, done seventy years ago, we must not apply to it the same criteria as we would think right to apply to similar work were it done now. We do not any longer use Brinkley’s constant of aberration, nor do we now think that Brinkley’s determinations of the star-distances were reliable. But, nevertheless, his investigations exercised a marked influence on the progress of science: they stimulated the study of the principles on which exact measurements were to be conducted.

Brinkley had another profession in addition to that of an astronomer. He was a divine. When a man endeavours to pursue two distinct occupations concurrently, it will be equally easy to explain why his career should be successful, or why it should be the reverse. If he succeeds, he will, of course, exemplify the wisdom of having provided two strings to his bow. Should he fail, it is, of course, because he has attempted to sit on two stools at once. In Brinkley’s case, his two professions must be likened to the two strings rather than to the two stools. It is true that his practical experience of a clerical life was very slender. He had made no attempt to combine the routine of a parish with his labours in the Observatory. Nor do we associate a special eminence in any department of religious work with his name. If, however, we are to measure Brinkley’s merits as a divine by the ecclesiastical preferment which he received, his services to theology must have rivalled his services to astronomy. Having been raised step by step in the church, he was at last appointed to the See of Cloyne in 1826 as the successor of Bishop Berkeley.

Now, though it was permissible for the Archdeacon to be also the Andrews Professor, yet when the Archdeacon became a Bishop it was understood that he should transfer his residence from the Observatory to the Palace. The Chair of Astronomy accordingly became vacant. Brinkley’s subsequent career seems to have been devoted entirely to ecclesiastical matters, and for the last ten years of his life he did not contribute a paper to any scientific society. Arago, after a characteristic lament that Brinkley should have forsaken the pursuit of Science for the temporal and spiritual attractions of a Bishopric, pays a tribute to the conscientiousness of the quondam astronomer:—

“A partir du jour ou il fut revêtu de l’episcopat, l’homme dont toute la vie avait été consacrée jusque-là à la contemplation du firmament et à la solution des questions sublimes qui recèlent les mouvements des astres, divorca complétement avec ces douces, avec ces entraînantes[139] occupations, pour se livrer sans partage aux devoirs de sa charge nouvelle, afin d’échapper, je suppose, à la tentation, l’ex-Directeur de l’Observatoire Royal d’Irlande, l’ex-Andrews Professor d’Astronomie de l’Université n’avait pas même dans son palais la plus modeste lunette. On doit la révélation de se fait presque incroyable, à l’indiscrétion d’une personne qui s’étant trouvée chez l’évêque de Cloyne un jour d’éclipse de Lune, eut le déplaisir, faute d’instruments, de ne pouvoir suivre la marche du phénomène qu’avec ses yeux.”

The good Bishop died on the 13th September, 1835. He was buried in the Chapel of Trinity College, and a fine monument to his memory is a familiar object at the foot of the noble old staircase of the library. The best memorial of Brinkley is his admirable book on the Elements of Plane Astronomy. It passed through many editions in his lifetime, and even at the present day the same work, revised first by Dr. Luby and more recently by the Rev. Dr. Stubbs and Dr. Brünnow, has a large and well-merited circulation.

On the 4th August, 1805, a few years before the great circle was erected at the Observatory, William Rowan Hamilton was born in No. 36, Dominick Street, Dublin. He was educated by his uncle, the Rev. James Hamilton, at Trim, and his aunt, Jane Sidney Hamilton. The astounding precocity of the child is thus described by his biographer, Mr. Graves, to whose laborious and painstaking execution of his great task I must here make my acknowledgments. Of William Rowan Hamilton it is asserted that, “continuing a vigorous child in spirits and playfulness, he was, at three years of age, a superior reader of English and considerably advanced in arithmetic; at four, a good geographer; at five, able to read and translate Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and loving to recite Dryden, Collins, Milton, and Homer; at eight he has added Italian and French, and given vent to his feelings in extemporised Latin; and before he is ten he is a student of Arabic and Sanskrit. And all this knowledge seems to have been acquired, not indeed without diligence, but with perfect ease, and applied, as occasion arose, with practical judgment and tact.”[107]

When Hamilton was seventeen years old (1822), he had written original mathematical papers, and with two of these—entitled respectively, “Osculating Parabola to Curves of Double Curvature,” and “On Contacts between Algebraic Curves and Surfaces”—he paid a visit to Dr. Brinkley at the Observatory. The Royal Astronomer was impressed by their value, and desired to see them in a more developed form. Thus originated an acquaintance between the scientific veteran, soon to be a Bishop, and the brilliant lad about to enter college.

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After Brinkley had been appointed Bishop of Cloyne in 1826, Hamilton was immediately mentioned as his probable successor. Mr. Graves, to whom I am indebted for these particulars, assures us that Hamilton never put himself forward until a week before the election, when he received an urgent letter from his tutor, Mr. Boyton, to say that the Board were favourably disposed towards him. On the 16th June, 1827, the undergraduate of twenty-two, William Rowan Hamilton, was unanimously elected to the Chair of Astronomy. Nor was he without formidable competitors. Airy was a candidate, and so were some of the Fellows of Trinity College; yet a general approval, almost unanimous, ratified the choice of the Board. We say almost unanimous, because there was at least one weighty opinion on the other side. Bishop Brinkley thought that Hamilton had acted imprudently in accepting the post, and that it would have been wiser for him to have sought a Fellowship. With Hamilton’s life before us, we can now see that the Bishop was not right. The leisure and the seclusion of the Observatory were necessary conditions for Hamilton’s colossal labours. After his election to the Chair of Astronomy, Hamilton proceeded to his degree in the usual manner; but before doing so, he had, as an undergraduate, to perform the somewhat anomalous duty of examining graduates in the higher branches of mathematics for Bishop Law’s mathematical premium.

The history of Dunsink Observatory for the next 38 years may be epitomised in a single word—Quaternions. It will be unnecessary to refer in any detail to the great career of our great mathematician. The early promise of the marvellous child and the brilliant career of the unparalleled student soon bore fruit in the congenial atmosphere of the Observatory. Conical Refraction, the Theory of Rays, the general method of Dynamics—any one of these researches would have conferred fame of which the greatest mathematician might have been proud, but with Hamilton these were merely incidental to the great work of his life. With huge industry he cultivated his powers, he wrought his mighty system of Quaternions, and found in it a weapon adequate to deal with the most profound mathematical problems of nature. It is not Hamilton’s fault if others have found that to wield this sword of a giant the arm of the giant is also necessary. Most of us feel satisfied if we know enough to be able to reverence the two awful volumes which every mathematician likes to see on his shelves, and which he generally leaves there.

So great a personality as Hamilton has naturally gathered around itself much biographical interest. The intimacy between Hamilton and Wordsworth has given many interesting pages to Mr. Graves’ book, and how intimate the friendship became may be conjectured from the account of their first meeting. We are told how Hamilton walked back with Wordsworth[141] to see him home after a delightful evening, and how Wordsworth then turned to see Hamilton back, and how the process was repeated I know not how often. It appears that Hamilton submitted his poetic effusions to his friend, and they were returned with gentle criticism, though with an occasional admission by Wordsworth that the mathematician’s verses possessed genuine feeling. Then there is the visit of Wordsworth to Dunsink, where to this day a beautiful shady walk bears his name. Hamilton enjoyed the privilege of intimacy with many cultivated intellects. He knew Coleridge; with Sir John Herschel he was in frequent communication; and he had many lady correspondents, including Maria Edgeworth. The bulk of Hamilton’s scientific correspondence was with the late Professor De Morgan, a man whose intellectual endowments were of such a different type to those of Hamilton, that, except in being both mathematicians, they had but little in common. On the death of Hamilton, De Morgan writes to Sir John Herschel (Sept. 13, 1865):—

“W. R. Hamilton was an intimate friend whom I spoke to once in my life—at Babbage’s about 1830; but for 30 years we have corresponded. I saw him a second time at the dinner you got at the Freemason’s when you came from the Cape, but I could not get near enough to speak.”[108]

The Observatory had the usual equipment of a transit instrument, a circle, and an equatorial, but no further additions were made to the instruments during the long sojourn of Hamilton. Observations were made by the assistant, Mr. Thomson, who, after a life passed in the service, retired in 1874, and lived a few years to enjoy the pension conferred on him by the Board. Just before Sir W. Hamilton’s death an important donation was received by the College. I shall here mention the circumstances under which it was made. The particulars were related to me partly by the donor himself, and partly by the late Earl of Rosse. The chief incidents in the narrative may be found in the life of De Morgan[109] to which I have already referred.

Sir James South was a medical man who acquired considerable wealth early in life, and then devoted himself with great assiduity to astronomy. He became an expert observer, and in conjunction with Sir John Herschel formed a series of double star measures that obtained much fame. Honours flowed in upon South; he received a pension and a knighthood; and he prepared for further astronomical work. His first care was to procure a superior telescope, and from Cauchoix, a French optician of renown, he procured an object-glass 12 inches in[142] diameter, and possessing great optical perfection. For this lens, or rather pair of lenses, he paid either £800 or £1,000. South returned with this prize to his observatory at Campden Hill, Kensington, and commenced to have the mounting executed in a manner befitting the optical excellence of the lens. Brunel designed the revolving dome; it was made of mahogany, and cost, I believe, £2,000; and inside this building the eminent firm of Troughton & Simms were called upon to erect the telescope. But sad troubles followed, of which an entertaining account is given in De Morgan’s Life (p. 61), and the mounting was a dismal failure.

Sir James South, at all events in the later part of his career, dearly loved a fray. He commissioned a friend to bear a hostile message to a distinguished scientific contemporary. The duel never came off. Perhaps, even if it had, the results might not have been sanguinary, for it had been suggested that the two astronomers would, of course, have been placed at telescopic distances apart. But to those to whom he was attached his loyalty and devotion were unbounded; his purse and his influence were alike at their disposal. To these characteristics of South we owe the great equatorial telescope now at Dunsink Observatory.

The precious object-glass remained in his possession for about thirty years, until such time as the late Earl of Rosse was installed as Chancellor of the University. The Earl was one of Sir James’ warm friends, and he celebrated the occasion by presenting the great object-glass to the University of Dublin. The date of the gift is 17th February, 1863.

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It was thus only a few years before Sir W. R. Hamilton’s death that Dunsink Observatory possessed a really fine objective; but it was only an objective, it was not a telescope. The engrossing labours of Sir W. R. Hamilton’s mathematical work, his advancing years, and his declining health, did not permit him to undertake the arduous labour of its erection. Sir James South found in this a sad grievance. I have heard him denounce this inaction with that vigorous language which he was accustomed to use. He had even offered to contribute liberally to the expenses of mounting, if the College authorities would put it in hands. It was not, however, until Sir W. R. Hamilton’s successor was appointed (1865) that the work was done. South lived just long enough to know that the great instrument was at last being erected. A view of the instrument, named the South Equatorial, after the donor, is shown in the adjoining illustration.

The successor of Sir William Rowan Hamilton as Andrews Professor of Astronomy was Dr. Francis Brünnow. He was a German by birth, who had distinguished himself by various astronomical researches, and by an excellent work on Practical Astronomy. He had previously occupied the Chair of Astronomy at the University of Michigan. When Brünnow came to Dunsink, his first care was the mounting of the great South Equatorial. A building was erected on the lawn, surmounted by a dome, and fitted with revolving machinery by Messrs. Grubb, who also constructed the tube and stand. A micrometer, from the Berlin firm of Messrs. Pistor & Martin, was added, and thus the South object-glass, forty years after it was made, came into actual use.

Dr. Brünnow devoted himself chiefly to the investigation of the Parallax of Stars. In this he was, indeed, following the traditions of the Observatory as laid down by Brinkley. Brünnow published two parts of his researches on this difficult subject. These papers are now regarded as a classical authority in this branch of astronomy. The pains which he took to eliminate error, and the consummate manner in which he has discussed his results, show him to have been both a skilful observer and an ingenious computer.

The fundamental equipment of the modern Observatory must include an equatorial and a meridian circle. Dunsink was now provided with the former, but there was no meridian circle. The great Ramsden instrument had become obsolete. The old transit had also seen more than half-a-century of service, and could not be relied on for accurate work. A splendid meridian circle was therefore ordered, by the liberality of the Board, from Messrs. Pistor & Martin, of Berlin. It was erected in 1872-1873, at a cost of £800. The aperture of this instrument is 6·4 inches and the length is 8 feet. The circles are divided to two-minute spaces, and read by[144] eight microscopes, four on each side. The instrument can be reversed, and has north and south collimators. The Meridian Room and the fine instrument just described are shown in the subjoined illustration.

In 1874 Dr. Brünnow resigned, and was succeeded by the present writer; and about the same time Dr. Ralph Copeland was appointed assistant. In the following year Dr. Copeland went to the Earl of Crawford’s Observatory at Dunecht, and he now fills the distinguished position of Royal Astronomer of Scotland. Dr. Copeland was succeeded as assistant at Dunsink by Mr. C. E. Burton. Failing health caused Mr. Burton’s resignation in 1878, and Dr. J. L. E. Dreyer then came to Dunsink, where he remained till the death of the late Dr. Romney Robinson in 1882 created a vacancy in the post of Astronomer at Armagh, to which Dr. Dreyer was then appointed. His place at Dunsink was filled by Dr. Arthur A. Rambaut, the present assistant.

Among the additions made to the Observatory under my direction may be mentioned an electric chronograph for recording transits. A time service has also been in operation for many years, by which the standard mean time clock in the Observatory controls, on Jones’ system, the Front clock and the Board-room clock in the Port and Docks Office, Westmoreland Street, Dublin. The ball falls at this office at 1 p.m., Greenwich time, and the fact of falling reports itself automatically at Dunsink, while the[145] Front clock reports itself at Dunsink every minute. But the chief addition to the Observatory in late years is the superb reflecting telescope for photographic purposes, which is the gift of Isaac Roberts, Esq., F.R.S., of Crowborough, Sussex. This instrument has been established in the small dome on the top of the Observatory.

The last chronicle of Dunsink that it may be necessary here to mention is that Sir Robert Ball was appointed, on 20th February, 1892, to succeed Professor J. Couch Adams as Lowndean Professor of Astronomy in the University of Cambridge.

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[147]

“The Books, but especially the Parchments.”

THE LIBRARY.

The Library had its beginning in 1601, from a subscription by the officers and soldiers of Queen Elizabeth’s army in Ireland. Prior to that, indeed, there were a few books; a list (dated 1600) of forty books, ten of which were MS., has been preserved, and was printed by Dr. J. K. Ingram in an appendix to his Address to the Library Association. It includes—of classical authors—Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero. In 1601, however, in order to commemorate the battle of Kinsale, in which the Spanish troops and their Irish allies were defeated, the troops subscribed £700[110] to purchase books for the newly-founded College. “Then souldiers,” says Dr. Bernard, “were for the advancement of learning.” Possibly; but it is significant that the money was subscribed “out of the arrears of their pay.” However, the example, as we shall see, proved fruitful. The money was[148] entrusted to Luke Challoner and James Ussher (afterwards Primate), who accordingly went to London to make their purchases. It happened that Sir Thomas Bodley was at the same time buying books for his library at Oxford, and he and Ussher consulted, to their mutual advantage.

It may be asked, What notable books did they buy, and what prices did they pay? As to the first, there exists a rough shelf-list of books in the Library which must have been drawn up very soon after this. It is in Challoner’s handwriting, and shows that rarities were not sought for, but books useful for study and research. The prices are not recorded, but Challoner has left a list of the prices he paid for his own books a few years earlier. A few specimens of these may be interesting. Scapulæ Lexicon cost him 12s.; a Hebrew Bible in 4to, 16s.; an English Bible, 8vo, 6s.; Stephani Concordantiæ, 14s.; Cicero: Opera Omnia, 8vo, 6s. 8d.; Homer: Iliad and Odyssey, each 2s. 6d.; an 8vo Virgil, 1s. 4d.; another, in 16mo, 10d. The most expensive books are—Mercator’s Tabula, £3, and Vatablus; Biblia Sacra (Hebrew, Greek, Latin), £3 10s. The average price was about 5s. A few years later we find Challoner and Ussher again in London buying books for the Library. Chiefly, no doubt, in consequence of their purchases, the number of books in 1610 was about 4,000. In 1635 the Library is already mentioned as a matter of pride to the College by Sir W. Brereton. He specifies a MS. of Roger Bacon, which, he says, they highly esteem, considering it to be the only copy of that great man’s Opus Majus. Brereton, however, professes himself sceptical, on the ground that the MS. is so very clean and newly bound. How the latter fact could militate against the antiquity of the MS. is not very clear. Brereton also pronounces the Library to be not well furnished with books. The building, too, he reports as not large or well contrived.[111]

It was, however, at the Restoration that the Library was at once raised to the first class, at least as regards MSS., by the accession of Archbishop Ussher’s library. The fortunes of this were rather remarkable. During the rebellion of 1641 it was in Drogheda, the seat of the Archiepiscopal residence, where it was in great peril of destruction, that place being besieged for four months. Shortly after the raising of the siege it was transferred to Chester, and subsequently to Chelsea College. Here, however, it was not much safer than in Ireland, for the Archbishop having preached against the authority of the Assembly of Divines, the House of Commons confiscated his library, the severest punishment they had it[149] in their power to inflict. Happily, there were two men in the Assembly of nobler sentiments—Dr. Featley, formerly chaplain to Archbishop Abbot, and the learned John Selden.[112] By Selden’s help, Dr. Featley either obtained a grant of the library or was enabled to purchase it for a small sum, and so preserved it for the Primate; but part had already been embezzled.

When Ussher was appointed by the Benchers preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, apartments were appropriated to his use, in which he was able to place his library, or rather pack up as much of it as remained. It was his intention to bequeath it to Trinity College, as a token of gratitude to the place where he had received his education; but having lost all his other property in the disturbances of the time, he was obliged to give up this purpose and to leave it to his daughter, Lady Tyrrell, wife of Sir Timothy Tyrrell. Ussher died in 1656. The library was famous, and Parr, in his Life of Ussher, states that “the King of Denmark and Cardinal Mazarin endeavoured to obtain it, offering a good price through their agents in England; but Cromwell having, by an Order in Council, prohibited its being sold without his consent, it was bought by the soldiers and officers of the then army in Ireland, who, out of emulation to the previous noble action of Queen Elizabeth’s army, were incited by some men of publick spirits to the like performance, and they had it for much less than it was really worth, or what had been offered for it before by the agents above-mentioned [viz., for £2,200]; they had also with it all his manuscripts (which were not of his own handwriting), as also a choice, though not numerous, collection of ancient coins. But when this library was brought over into Ireland, the usurper and his son, who then commanded in chief there, would not bestow it on the Colledge of Dublin, least perhaps the gift should not appear so considerable as it would do by itself; and therefore they gave out that they would reserve it for a new Colledge or Hall which they said they intended to build and endow; but it proved that as those were not times, so they were not persons capable of any such noble or pious work; so that this library lay in the Castle of Dublin unbestowed and unemployed all the remaining time of Cromwell’s usurpation; but where this treasure was kept being left open, many of the books and most of the best manuscripts were stolen away or else imbezled (sic) by those who were intrusted with them; but after his late[150] Majesty’s Restauration, when they fell to his disposal, he generously bestowed them on the Colledge for which they were intended by the owner, where they now remain.”

Dr. Parr’s account may perhaps require to be modified by comparison with the following document:—“June 29, 1659.—The Commissioners of Parliament for the Government of Ireland referred to ‘certain persons named’ to take a view of the gallery at Cork House and the armory-room near the Castle, and to consider with workmen which place may be most convenient for placing Dr. Ussher’s Library, and to present an estimate of the charge for making Presses and Chains for the Books in order to their use and security.” On 1st November following it was ordered “that the Trustees for Trinity College, as also Dr. Watson, Dr. Gorges, and Mr. Williamson, be desired to attend the Board and to consider together how the Library formerly belonging to Dr. Ussher, purchased by the State and army, may be disposed and fitted for Publick use. And also to take into consideration a Letter from Dr. Berners [query, Bernard], as also a Paper delivered by Dr. Jones, concerning the publishing of some part of the said Library or manuscripts, and of recovering some part of the said Library being at present abroad in some men’s hands, albeit they ought to have been returned hither with the Books as were purchased, or such only as were sent hither and are in the custody of Mr. Williamson or others. And to inform themselves in what condition the said Library at present is. Whether since the coming of the said Books hither any of them have been lent out or otherwise disposed of—to whom, when, and by whose order, with what else may concern the Business.”[113]

With respect to the part which the King had in sending the books to the College, Dr. Ingram seems to suspect that Dr. Parr’s “effusively loyal spirit led him erroneously to attribute this act of restitution to Charles II. His Majesty’s consent,” he adds, “would perhaps be formally necessary, but it seems to have been really the Irish House of Commons that moved in the matter. In the Journals of the House under that date, 31 Maii, 1661, appears an order ‘that the Vice-Chancellor and Provost of the College of Dublin, and Mr. Richard Lingard, with such others as they will take to their assistance, be decreed and are hereby empowered, with all convenient speed, to cause the Library formerly belonging to the late Lord Primate of Armagh, and purchased by the army, to be brought from the Castle of Dublin, where they now are, into the said College, there to be preserved for public use; and the said persons are likewise to take a catalogue of all the[151] said Library, both manuscripts and printed books, and to deliver the same into this House, to be inserted in the Journals of the House.’”[114] I may add that in the catalogue of MSS. drawn up by George Browne (afterwards Provost) in 1688 (and printed by Dr. Bernard in his Catalogus Manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ), these MSS. are stated to have been given by the “Conventus generalis habitus Dublinii an. 1666.” It seems probable, too, that Dr. Parr has somewhat exaggerated the losses from the Library when he says that most of the MSS. were lost. As far as we can judge in the absence of a catalogue earlier than the Restoration, the best MSS. would seem to be still in the collection. It still contains, happily, the most beautiful book in the world, to be presently described more particularly.

In 1671 the Countess of Bath, whose husband, Henry Bourchier, had been a Fellow, presented a collection of books purchased for the express purpose, some of them handsomely bound, and with her arms on the sides. Dr. Ingram has quoted from the Life and Errors of John Dunton an interesting notice of the Library in 1704. From this we learn that there was nothing to distinguish the building externally; “it is,” says he, “over the scholars’ lodgings, the length of one of the quadrangles, and contains a great many choice books of great value, particularly one, the largest I ever saw for breadth; it was an Herbal, containing the lively portraitures of all sorts of Trees, Plants, Herbs, and Flowers.” The Library at that time served as a Museum as well, for he says that he was shown in the same place “the skin of a notorious Tory which had been tanned and stuffed with straw.” This interesting relic does not now exist, which is not surprising, considering the state of dilapidation in which it was at the time of Dunton’s visit.[115] Not very long after Dunton’s visit the foundation stone of the present Library was laid (1712), the House of Commons having granted considerable sums for the purpose. It was completed in 1732. The print on next page, dated 1753, gives an illustration of this building as it then appeared. In the interim we obtain an unsatisfactory glimpse of the state of things in a letter from Berkeley, then a Fellow, which mentions that the Library “is at present so old and ruinous and the books so out of order that there is little attendance given.”

The new building speedily received large accessions of books. In 1726 Dr. William Palliser, Archbishop of Cashel, bequeathed to the College all such books and editions in his[152] library as the College did not already possess. This gift amounted to about four thousand volumes. He made it a condition that these books should always be kept next to those of Archbishop Ussher.

A still greater benefactor to the Library was Dr. Claudius Gilbert, who had been Vice-Provost and Professor of Divinity. In forming his library he had in view the purpose of presenting it to the College, and applied great knowledge and judgment to the selection of books. His collection, the fruit of many years of such care, contained nearly thirteen thousand volumes, many of them early and rare texts. His bust was placed near the books in 1758.

Nearly at the same time as Gilbert’s gift, the MS. collection was largely augmented by the bequest of Dr. John Stearne, Bishop of Clogher and Vice-Chancellor of the University. This collection included that of Dr. John Madden (President of the College of Physicians), a catalogue of which was printed in Dr. Bernard’s Catalogus Manuscriptorum[153] Angliæ et Hiberniæ. Amongst the MSS. thus acquired was the collection in thirty-two folio volumes of the Depositions of the Sufferers by the Rising in 1641. These records had been in the custody of Matthew Barry, Clerk of the Council, and at his death were purchased by Dr. John Madden, at the sale of whose books they were purchased by Dr. Stearne. From the same collection we obtained a considerable number of letters and other documents relating to military and judicial proceedings in Ireland, especially from 1647 to 1679.

In 1786 there was added to the Library an extremely valuable collection of Irish (Celtic) books formerly belonging to the celebrated Edward Lhuyd,[116] at whose death they were purchased by Sir John Sebright. At the suggestion of Edmund Burke, Sir John presented the books to Trinity College in 1786. They include Brehon Law Commentaries, the Book of Leinster, and other important volumes.

A large and valuable acquisition was made in 1802, when the Library of M. Greffier Fagel, Pensionary of Holland, consisting of more than 20,000 volumes, was purchased by the Board of Erasmus Smith and presented to the College. The books had been removed to England for sale in 1794, when the French invaded Holland, and had been advertised by Mr. Christie for sale by auction March 1, 1802, and twenty-nine following days.

In 1805 a very choice collection of books, including many Editiones Principes, as well as books remarkable for the beauty of their printing or their binding, was bequeathed by Henry George Quin. In this collection are found some splendid specimens of printing and binding which will be mentioned by-and-by. In more recent times, also, we have received some valuable and interesting donations. In 1854, the Book of Armagh, a MS. of singular interest (to be referred to more particularly hereafter), was purchased for £300 by the Rev. W. Reeves, afterwards Bishop of Down and Connor. As he could not afford to retain the book himself, and only desired that it should be in safe custody in our Library, he parted with it for the same sum to the Archbishop of Armagh, Lord John George Beresford, who presented it to Trinity College.

In the same year Dr. Charles Wm. Wall, Vice-Provost, purchased, through Rev. Dr. Gibbings, several volumes of the original Records of the Inquisition at Rome, which had been removed to Paris by Napoleon I. Extracts from these have been published by Dr. Gibbings.

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Amongst more recent benefactors to the Library the Rev. Aiken Irvine and Dr. Neilson Hancock deserve to be noticed, the former of whom bequeathed about 1,000 volumes, and the latter about 250, in 1881 and 1885 respectively. Space forbids the enumeration of less important donations.

The College authorities, meanwhile, were liberal in granting money for the purchase of books. Between November, 1805, and March, 1806, we find them giving fifty guineas for the Complutensian Polyglot, sixty-two for Prynne’s Records, and twenty-two and a-half for the first folio Shakespeare. Again, in the first six months of 1813 we find £126 spent on purchases at auctions, including some fifteenth-century books, and an Icelandic Bible which cost £14 15s. 9d. In addition to these purchases, the booksellers’ bills paid amounted to £230. Coming to a later period, we find for the ten years commencing with 1846 the average annual expenditure on purchases and binding was £668. After 1856, however, it was found necessary to contract the expenditure. The fixed sum now set apart annually for these purposes is £400. Extra grants are, however, made occasionally for special purchases. As the expense of the personal staff has considerably increased, the whole expenditure on the Library is larger than in 1856, and now amounts to about £2,000. The expense of administration may appear out of proportion to the amount available for the purchase of books. This is accounted for by the fact that English publications are received without cost.

The chief source of the growth of the Library in the present century has been the privilege granted by Act of Parliament in 1801—viz., the right to a copy of every book (including every “sheet of letterpress”) published in the United Kingdom. This privilege this Library shares with the British Museum, the Bodleian, that of Cambridge University, and the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh.[117] To the British Museum publishers are obliged to send their publications unasked; the other Libraries forfeit their right to any book not claimed by them within twelve months of publication. Accordingly, they jointly employ an agent in London for the purpose of claiming and forwarding books. The principal firms, however, send their publications as a matter of course, without waiting to be asked.

This obligation cannot be thought to be a grievance to authors and publishers, when[156] we reflect to what an extent authors, and therefore publishers, are dependent on the resources of these Libraries. What work of research could be produced without the aid they give? We benefit by the generosity of our forefathers; we are only asked to hand on the torch and help to do for posterity what antiquity has done for us. A money grant, however satisfactory to the Libraries, would not accomplish the same public end, namely, the preservation of the literature of the time, independently of the particular tastes or predilections of the successive librarians. Even in the case of very expensive works, of which only a small number of copies is issued, publishers take the obligation into account, and the result is a relatively slight increase of price not felt by the purchasers of such works.

The number of printed books in the Library in 1792 was about 46,000. In 1844 it had risen to 96,000, a large part of the increase being due to the acquisition of the Fagel Library. When the books were last counted (August, 1891), the printed books numbered 222,648, the MSS. 1,938, giving a total of 224,586. It should be remembered that we count volumes, not separate publications, hence a volume containing say thirty pamphlets counts only as one book. Many of the older volumes contain two or more books of considerable size bound in one.

This may suffice for the history of the Library: I now proceed to speak of its contents. If precedence is given to antiquity, the first objects to claim our attention are the Egyptian papyri. These were presented by Lord Kingsborough about 1838, and a catalogue of them was published by Dr. Edward Hincks. One of these is very finely embellished with pictures representing the history of a departed soul; several resemble the corresponding pictures in the papyrus of Ani, of which a fac-simile was recently published by the British Museum. Some of the pictures wanting in this (our) papyrus are supplied in others of the collection, such as the weighing of the soul, the ploughing, sowing, and reaping in the fields of Elysium.

It is, chronologically, a great step from these Egyptian MSS. to the oldest of our Greek and Latin MSS. Of Greek Biblical MSS. we have indeed few, but two of these are of considerable importance. One is the celebrated palimpsest codex of St. Matthew’s Gospel, known amongst Biblical critics as Z. The original text of this, in a beautiful large uncial character, was written not later than the sixth century. But at a later date (about the 13th century) this ancient writing was partially erased, and extracts from some of the[157] Greek Fathers written over it. The old writing was detected by Dr. John Barrett, formerly Librarian, who published the text in what was called “engraved fac-simile,” which gives a very correct idea of the original writing, although the form of each individual letter may not always be exactly represented. Dr. Barrett added a learned dissertation on both the more ancient and the later contents of the MS. Dr. Tregelles, with the help of chemical applications, was enabled to read some letters which had escaped Dr. Barrett, and he published an account of his discoveries in a quarto tract. He also entered his new readings in a copy of Barrett’s work. Strange to say, these two records of Tregelles differed considerably, and accordingly, when the present writer undertook to re-edit Barrett’s text with Tregelles’ additions, he found it necessary to examine the MS. throughout. In so doing, he was able to read several hundred letters and marks (such as marks of quotation, numbers of sections and canons, etc.) which had escaped both Barrett and Tregelles, besides correcting a few errors. The additions and corrections were made on Barrett’s plates, and the new edition was published in 1880.[118]

There is also a palimpsest fragment of Isaiah, apparently of somewhat earlier date, of which a lithographed fac-simile was included in the volume just mentioned. This fac-simile enabled Dr. Ceriani, of Milan, to identify the recension to which a certain group of MSS. of the Septuagint belongs.[119]

Of the Gospels, there is a copy (63) in a cursive hand of the tenth century with scholia. Under a portrait of St. Matthew is traceable a palimpsest fragment of a Greek Evangelistarium. There was anciently another copy of the Gospels (64), which, however, was reported missing in 1742. Most probably it had been lent to Bulkeley (a Fellow), who in fact collated it for Mill. It is now in the library of the Marquis of Bute.

Another important though not very ancient MS. of the New Testament is the celebrated Codex Montfortianus, historically notable as being pretty certainly the actual MS. on whose authority the verse I John v. 7 was admitted into Erasmus’ third edition, and thence into the received text. It is not older than the fifteenth century. A collation of the text of the Epistles is given by Barrett in his volume, Codex Rescriptus[158] S. Matthæi. Dr. Orlando Dobbin in 1854 devoted a volume to the MS., giving a complete collation of the Gospels and Acts. According to his researches, the text of the Epistles is copied from a MS. in Lincoln College, Oxford, the verse I John v. 7 being interpolated by the copyist.

This manuscript has the distinction that we know the names of nearly every person through whose hands it passed. On folio 56 is the note, “Sum Thomae Clementis, olim fratris Froyhe,” and on a leaf at the end is “Mayster Wyllams, of Corpus Christi....” After Clement it came into the possession of William Chark, from him to Dr. Thomas Montfort, and then to Ussher. Professor Rendel Harris, in his book on “The Origin of the Leicester Codex,” has discussed the history of the Montfort Codex. He makes the suggestion that Froyhe is an error for Roye, the accidental repetition of a letter changing “fratris Roye” into “fratris Froye” or “Froyhe.” There is proof that the MS. was in Franciscan hands (the names Ἰησους, Μαρία, ϕρἀγκωκος, are scribbled in it more than once). Barrett, for example, shows that Williams was a Franciscan, and frater Froyhe, or Roye, was probably of the same order. Now there was a very remarkable member of the Franciscan order, named William Roye, educated at Cambridge, who, however, in 1524, forsook the order, and joined Tyndale at Hamburg. It is not impossible that the codex in question was actually written by him. These, with a fragment (14th century) of the Epistle to the Romans, and a small Psalter dated 1533, exhaust our Greek Biblical manuscripts.

Of Latin Biblical manuscripts we have a considerable number, including several remarkable either for their text or their artistic execution. The most important for its text is that classed A. 4, 15, and called Codex Usserianus; a manuscript of the Gospels written probably in the sixth century, and exhibiting an old Latin text of the Hiberno-British Recension. It is defective at the beginning and the end; every leaf also is mutilated, so that no line remains complete. With the exception of a rude cross at the end of St. Luke’s Gospel, there is no attempt at ornament. Here and there are interlinear glosses scratched as with a needle point—as, for example, in reference to the paralytic who was “borne of four,” the four are interpreted as the four evangelists. It is remarkable that the pericopa de adultera is given in a text agreeing with the Vulgate. From this we may conclude—first, that the passage was not in the archetype; secondly, that the scribe had a copy of the Vulgate at hand; and thirdly, that it was from choice, not from necessity, that he copied the old Latin. The full text of this manuscript was published in Evangelia Ante-hieronymiana. Its history is unknown.

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Another MS., called The Garland of Howth, exhibits in St. Matthew’s Gospel a similar text, but elsewhere the Vulgate, or, in some parts, a mixed text. It is probably not earlier than the ninth century, or perhaps the tenth. Pictures of two of the evangelists remain—the others are lost. The MS. is coarsely written, and on very coarse parchment. The omissions in it, chiefly from homœoteleuton, are frequent and instructive. Some of the scribe’s blunders are curious. Thus, Matthew xxii. 42, “quid vobis videtur de operibus fidelis,” for “de χρο cuius filius;” Mark ii. 3, “qui iiii rotis portabatur;” xi. 12, “a bethania cum x essurivit ii;” xiv. 50, “discipuli omnes relinquentes eum cruci[fi]xerunt.” In Matthew xxvii. 5, an Irish gloss has got into the text—“proiectis arcadgabuth c.,” for “argenteis.” In Luke xxiii. 12 another gloss appears in the text—“opus malum malos in unum coniungunt.”

Remarkable both for text and ornament is the Book of Durrow (so called from Durrow, in King’s County, where St. Columba founded a monastery), a MS. of the Gospels (with the prologues, &c.), written perhaps in the seventh century. The text is a tolerably pure Vulgate. The colophon contains a prayer that whoever shall hold the book in his hand may remember the writer, Columba, who wrote this Gospel in the space of twelve days. There were many Columbas besides the Saint, and it is pretty certain that the present book was not written by Saint Columba. It is morally certain also that it was not written in twelve days. But there is good reason to believe that the scribe has merely copied the colophon from the book he was transcribing,[120] and if so, the archetype may have been written by Saint Columba, who has the reputation of being a scribe.

Except at the beginning of each Gospel, the only attempt at ornament is a series of red dots round the initial letters; but the letters of the first words of each Gospel are elaborately embellished in the characteristic Celtic style. Prefixed also to each Gospel is a page covered with interlaced ornament of great beauty, as well as another page with the symbol of the Evangelist. These pages have been represented in fac-simile (admirably as regards the tracing, but not with accurate reproduction of the colours) in Prof. Westwood’s Fac-similes of Irish and Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts. The volume was formerly enclosed in[160] a silver cover, which has long since disappeared; but a note in the book (written in 1677) gives the inscription, which stated that the cover was made by Flann, son of Mailsechnal, King of Ireland (who died in the year 916).[121]

This MS. was presented to the Library by Henry Jones, Bishop of Meath, Vice-Chancellor (1646 to 1660), the same whose gift of stairs, etc., to the Library in 1651 is commemorated on a brass plate just inside the door.

Conall MacGeoghegan relates of Saint Columba, “hee wrote 300 bookes with his one [own] hand, they were all new testaments, left a book to each of his churches in the kingdome w^ch Bookes sunck to the bottom of the Deepest waters, they would not lose one letter signe or character of them, w^ch I have seen partly my selfe of that book of them w^ch is at Dorow, in the K^s County, for I did see the Ignorant man that hath the same in his custody, when sickness came upon cattle, for their Remedi putt water on the booke and suffered it to rest there a while and saw alsoe cattle returne thereby to their former or pristinate and the book to receave noe loss.”[122] In earlier times, indeed, even in England, the scrapings of these Celtic manuscripts were believed to have medicinal virtues.

The Book of Durrow is far surpassed in beauty by the Book of Kells, so called from Kells in Co. Meath, in which monastery it had been preserved and doubtless written. This is also a MS. of the Gospels containing a mixed text, i.e., the Vulgate modified by additions, etc., from the old Latin. No words can convey an adequate idea of the beauty of this MS. This does not consist, as in some Oriental MSS., in a profusion of gilding—there is no gold whatever—nor in the addition of paintings independent of the text, but in the lavish variety of artistic adornment applied to the letters of the text, which justifies Professor Westwood in calling it “the most beautiful book in the world.” The ornament consists largely of ever-varying interlacing of serpents and of simple bands, with countless spirals alternately expanding and contracting in the peculiar “trumpet-shaped pattern.” The initial of every sentence throughout the Gospels is an artistic product, some of them exquisite, and no two precisely the same. In addition to this decoration, which adorns every page, there are many pages (about thirty) entirely full of ornament, showing the utmost skill and accuracy in almost microscopic detail. In fact, the detail is so minute that it often requires a lens to trace it; yet these minute lines are as firm as if drawn by a machine, and as free as if they[161]
[162] were the growth of nature. The exquisite harmony of the colouring is as admirable as the elegance of the tracery. Little wonder that it was said to have been written at the dictation of an angel. “If you look closely,” says Giraldus Cambrensis, “and penetrate to the secrets of the art, you will discover such delicate and subtile lines, so closely wrought, so twisted and interwoven, and adorned with colours still so fresh, that you will acknowledge that all this is the work rather of angelic than of human skill. The more frequently and carefully I examine it, I am always amazed with new beauties, and always discover things more and more admirable.”[123] Some pages originally left blank contain charters in the Irish language, conveying grants of lands to the Abbey of Kells, the Bishop of Meath, the Monastery of Ardbraccan, by Melaghlyn, King of Meath, and other monarchs in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

There are fine examples of the same school of Art in English Libraries, especially the Book of Lindisfarne, in the British Museum; the Book of St. Chad, in Lichfield, the writing in which is extremely like that in the Book of Kells; the Gospels of MacRegol, in the Bodleian; and the Gospels of MacDurnan, in Lambeth. Of these Irish and Hiberno-Saxon works Dr. Wangen says:—“The ornamental pages, borders, and initial letters exhibit such a rich variety of beautiful and peculiar designs, so admirable a taste in the arrangement of the colours, and such an uncommon perfection of finish, that one feels absolutely struck with amazement.” None of these, however, equals the Book of Kells in the number, the fulness, or the perfection of detail of the great pictorial pages, while the prodigality with which ornament is bestowed on every page and every paragraph is a feature peculiar to it.

There is nothing in the Book of Kells itself to indicate its date, the last leaf—which may have contained the name of the scribe—being lost. The Book of Lindisfarne contains a note (of the tenth century) naming the scribe and the illuminator, the former being Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne (died 721), and the latter his successor in the See, Aethelwald (died 737 or 740). MacRiagoil, scribe, and Abbot of Birr (King’s County), died in 820. The Gospels of MacDurnan appear from the character of the writing to be coeval with the Book of Armagh, which is known to have been written in 807. From a comparison of the Book of Kells with these MSS., it may be inferred that it belongs to the eighth century.

The volume was anciently enclosed in a golden cover, and the Annals of the Four[163] Masters record, under the year 1006, that in that year it was stolen from the Church of Kells, and was found after twenty nights and two months with its gold stolen off and a sod over it. It is in that passage called the great Gospel of Columbkille—i.e., St. Columba. It owes that name, probably, to its connection with Columba’s Monastery at Kells, where, no doubt, it was written, and where it remained until the dissolution of the monasteries. From Richard Plunket, the last Abbot, it passed to one Gerald Plunket, and from him to Ussher.

A very interesting and important MS. is the Book of Armagh, containing the entire New Testament (in Latin), being the only complete copy which has come down to us from the ancient Irish Church. In it the Gospels are followed immediately by St. Paul’s Epistles, including the fictitious Epistle to the Laodiceans. It contains also memoirs of St. Patrick, with his Confession, and a Life of St. Martin of Tours, by Sulpicius Severus. The name of the scribe was written in several places, but in every instance has been more or less effectually erased. However, the Bishop of Limerick (Dr. Charles Graves) succeeded in deciphering it sufficiently to identify the name as Ferdomnach. But there were several scribes of that name, and how to decide which was the one in question? Dr. Graves found another note, only partly legible, and that with extreme difficulty, which appeared to have contained the name Ferdomnach, with the words, “dictante herede Patricii ——bach.” “Heres Patricii” was the title of the Archbishop of Armagh. The only one who satisfied the conditions of time, and whose name ended in “bach,” was Torbach, who only occupied the See for one year. In this way the actual year in which the MS. was written was determined—viz., A.D. 807.[124] Prof. Westwood thinks the same scribe wrote the Gospels of MacDurnan, now at Lambeth. There is a note of later date in the volume relating to certain privileges of the Church of Armagh, and written “in the presence of Brian, imperator Scotorum”—i.e., Brian Boru, who visited Armagh in 1004 and 1006, and died 1014. The writer of this note calls himself Calvus Perennis—a Latin rendering of his name, Maolsuthain.[125] He was Brian’s private confessor. The book was in high esteem, being regarded as the actual writing of St. Patrick, and called the Canon of Patrick. Oaths taken[164] upon it were considered peculiarly obligatory, and the violation of such an oath brought on him the vengeance of the Saint, as well as extreme civil penalties. The book was entrusted to the care of a hereditary keeper, whose family derived their name, “Maor” or “Moyre,” from the office, to which, moreover, an endowment of land was attached. The book remained in the possession of this family until the end of the seventeenth century, when, having been pawned by the keeper, it came by purchase into the hands of Arthur Brownlow, from whose lineal representative it was bought, as above related, by Rev. Dr. Reeves.[126] An interesting object connected with the Book of Armagh is its leather satchel, finely embossed with figures of animals and interlaced work. It is formed of a single piece of leather, 36 in. long and 12½ broad, folded so as to make a flat-sided pouch, 12 in. high, 12¾ broad, and 2¼ deep. Part of it is doubled over to make a flap, in which are eight brass-bound slits, corresponding to as many brass loops projecting from the case, in which ran two rods, meeting in the middle, where they were secured by a lock. In early times, in Irish monastic libraries, books were kept in such satchels, which were suspended by straps from hooks in the wall. Thus it is related in an old legend that “on the night of Longaradh’s death all the book satchels in Ireland fell down.”

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Few of these ancient satchels have come down to us. When Dr. Reeves wrote, he knew of only one other, namely, that now in Dublin, in the Franciscan Monastery, whither it has come from the Monastery of St. Isidore in Rome. A third, however, much ruder, is in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, enclosing an Irish Missal (illustrated in Gilbert’s Irish Historical MSS.); a fourth is described and illustrated by Miss Stokes in Archæologia, vol. xliii., No. xiv.; a fifth is at Milan, containing a Syro-hexaplar codex, and a full-size illustration of it is given in Dr. Ceriani’s reproduction of that codex. A similar satchel, containing an Ethiopic book, is in St. John’s College, Oxford. In Abyssinia, indeed, they are frequent; all the books in the Monastery of Suriani are so enclosed.[127] A figure of monks with their satchels, as represented on an ancient sculptured stone, is given in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, New Series, vol. iii., 1881.

The Annals record that in the year 937 a cover was made for the Canon of Patrick by Donnchadh, son of Flann. This was doubtless a metal case. The satchel was clearly not made for it.

We have seen that the ancient cases of the Books of Kells and Durrow were lost long since. Two such shrines (“cumdachs”) are in our Library—one enclosing the[166] Book of Dimma, the other the Book of Mulling or Moling. These books are named from their scribes, who, according to the Annals, lived in the seventh century. Both these are copies of the Gospels; both, however, contain also a Missa Infirmorum of later date.[128] The case of the Book of Dimma is of silver, beautifully wrought with Celtic tracery. It bears an inscription which runs as follows:—“Tatheus O’Kearbuill beideev meipsum deauravit, dominus domnaldus O Cuanain converbius ultimo meipsum restauravit, Tomas Ceard dachorig in mindsa.” Thady O’Carroll Boy was Prince of Ely in the middle of the twelfth century; Donald O’Cuanain was Bishop of Killaloe from 1230 to 1260.

The ends of the case are obviously more ancient, apparently much more ancient, than the sides. It will be observed that the inscription says nothing about the original maker of the case.

This book, long kept in the monastery at Roscrea, disappeared at the dissolution of the monasteries, and is said to have been found again in 1789 by boys hunting rabbits in Devil’s Bit Mountains in Tipperary. The boys tore off part of the silver plate, and picked out some of the lapis lazuli.[129] The MS. was purchased from Sir W. Betham by the College for £200.

The case or shrine of the Book of Mulling appears to have been originally plain, except for some small pieces of crystal and lapis lazuli inserted on one side. In 1402, however, a very large crystal set in fine niello work was inserted in the same side. In 1891, thinking I saw trace of a letter under this crystal, I raised it, and thereby revealed a brass plate hitherto concealed by dust, and bearing the inscription: “Artturus | ver domin | us & lageniae | rinsdabe | tilia & baroni | anno & dni | millio | quadrin | gentesi | mo sedo |.” This Arthur was Arthur or Art MacMurrough Kavanagh, who opposed Richard II. This inscription, no doubt, has reference to the insertion of the crystal and the niello work, not to the original construction of the case. This MS. also contains a Missa Infirmorum (published by Bishop Forbes with that in the Book of Dimma).

Another beautiful Latin MS. of Irish origin is the Psalter of Ricemarch, so called because it was formerly in the possession of that prelate (Bishop of St. David’s, d. 1099), who has written in it some Latin verses. It is perhaps not much older than his time. The book was the property of Bishop Bedell, whose autograph it bears, and was lent by him to[167] Archbishop Ussher, and to this circumstance it owes its preservation, Bedell’s library having been destroyed in the troubles of the time.

The last of these Latin Biblical MSS. which I shall mention is not Irish, but is somewhat of a curiosity. It is a single leaf of the Codex Palatinus, a fifth-century MS. of the old Latin version of the Gospels written in silver letters on purple vellum. The rest of the MS. (so far as it has been preserved) is in the Imperial Library at Vienna, which acquired it at some unknown period between 1800 and 1829. Our leaf was purchased by Dr. Todd in 1843. It is not improbable that the MS. was abstracted from some monastic library during the Napoleonic wars, and that this leaf, becoming separated from the rest, came into the hands of an Irish soldier. This dispersion of a MS. is less unusual than might be supposed. The Book of Leinster, to be presently mentioned, furnishes a notable example.[130] I recently received from a correspondent two leaves of a Syriac MS., which, by the help of Wright’s catalogue, Dr. Gwynn identified as two of the missing leaves of a MS. in the British Museum, the MS. having been imperfect when purchased for that Library.

The Book of Hymns (11th century) deserves mention both for the beauty of its initial letters and for the interest of its contents. Some of the hymns are Latin, some Gælic; the greater part of both has been published by the Irish Archæological Society, with learned notes by Dr. Todd, and with reproductions of the initial letters. The remainder of the Gælic hymns has been published by Dr. Whitley Stokes in his Goidilica.

I may appropriately mention here a remarkable Pontifical formerly belonging to the Church of Canterbury, and, as Bishop Reeves remarked to me, probably “contrectatus manibus S. Thomae de Becket.” In this the sentence of ordination of priests is in the old form, and in the margin is added, in a much later hand, the new form as adopted by the Church of Rome before the Reformation, and retained in our Ordinal.[131]

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In Celtic literature we are tolerably rich. Part of our collection came to us, as already mentioned, by gift from Sir John Sebright, who had purchased the books at Edward Lhuyd’s sale. Amongst these is the Book of Leinster, a large folio of about the twelfth century, of very varied contents—historical, romantic, genealogical, and hagiological. The entire text has been published in lithographed fac-simile at the joint expense of Trinity College and the Royal Irish Academy, with a preface by Professor R. Atkinson. When this MS. was presented to our Library, eleven leaves were missing. These were found, however, and identified by Dr. Todd, in the Monastery of St. Isidore in Rome, whither they had gone from the Irish College in Louvain. They are now deposited in the Franciscan Monastery in Dublin.

The history of the Book of Lecain or Leacan, another important Irish MS., forms a curious counterpart to that of the Book of Leinster. The former was included in Ussher’s collection, and was in our Library in 1688 when the catalogue was compiled. It is there recorded, however, that nine leaves were wanting. It is stated by Nicolson (Irish Historical Library, p. 39), on the authority of Dr. Raymond, that the book was lodged in Paris by Sir John Fitzgerald in the time of James II. If so, this must have been very soon after the catalogue was compiled. In 1787, through the Abbé Kearney of Paris, it was sent to the Royal Irish Academy, then recently founded, and in their Library it is now preserved. The nine missing folios were found by O’Curry in one of the Sebright volumes (H. 2, 17). Although the original Book of Lecain has thus passed from us, we possess a beautiful copy (on vellum) written by Eugene O’Curry in the old Irish hand. It is worth noting that the professional scribe still exists in Ireland, and writes a hand undistinguishable from that of his predecessors many centuries ago.

In connection with the history of these two volumes, it is not inappropriate to mention that of another important volume, the Book of Ballymote. This was formerly in Trinity College Library, but was lent in 1720 to Dr. Raymond, and for a time disappeared. In 1769 it turned up at Drogheda, and being purchased by Chevalier O’Gorman, was by him presented to the Royal Irish Academy in 1785. We possess a paper copy of a portion of it, including one folio which is now missing from the original volume.

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Here is preserved the MS. already mentioned from which Jebb published Roger Bacon’s Opus Majus, also the two MSS. from which Howard published the Chronicle of Florence of Worcester; the original MS., as prepared for press, of Spottiswoode’s History of the Church of Scotland; the original draft of Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge; also the originals of Sir Thomas Roe’s Correspondence (Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte, 1621-8, published London, 1740).

Of MSS. bearing on Irish history we have a fair collection. First may be mentioned a volume of Letters of Queen Elisabeth on Public Affairs in Ireland, 1565 to 1570, each letter having her sign-manual. There is also a volume of Correspondence of Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy, with the English Government, 1612-1614; the thirty-two volumes already mentioned of the Depositions relative to the Rising of 1641; thirteen volumes of the Correspondence of Geo. Clarke, Secretary of War, 1690-1694; as many of Archbishop King’s Correspondence, 1696-1729; Irish Treasury Accounts, 1714-1719; and twelve volumes of Major Sirr’s papers, letters, etc., chiefly connected with the Rebellion in 1798. We have also Dr. R. R. Madden’s large collection of papers relating to the United Irishmen.

There are several important volumes of Waldensian literature, which have been catalogued and described by Todd in his Books of the Vaudois. With Wyclif literature also we are well supplied, and we have one of the two known copies of the first complete English Prose Psalter, recently published by Dr. Karl Bülbring for the Early English Text Society. We have two MSS. of Piers Plowman, five of Rolle’s Pricke of Conscience, and several hymns by Rolle (published by Todd in the British Magazine, vol. ix.). Dr. Ingram, a few years ago, identified the earliest English translation of the De Imitatione, disguised under the title the book occasionally bore—Musica Ecclesiastica.

Nor must I omit to mention the Life of St. Alban in Norman-French, probably in the handwriting of Matthew Paris, the text of which has been published, with glossary, etc., by Professor Atkinson. The original MS. is adorned with pictures on nearly every page.

Illustrative of French history we possess statistical accounts of the French provinces and cities of about the year 1698, filling thirty-two volumes; also a collection, in twenty-five volumes, of Memoirs (some called “Secret”) of the Foreign and the Financial Affairs of France in the Reign of Louis XV. These formed part of the Fagel Library. The same library contains a large collection of maps, printed and MS., some of great rarity. Copies of two or three of these have lately been made for the Colonial Office, as of value with respect to a question of the boundary of British Guiana.

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Our Oriental manuscripts include a magnificent Koran from the Library of Tippoo, presented by the East India Company; also a very fine copy of the Shâh Nâmeh from the same library, likewise presented by the Company; some beautiful books from the Royal Library at Shiraz, presented, with other Oriental MSS., by W. Digges Latouche; and many fine Persian MSS., purchased from Sir W. Ouseley. An interesting and important Syriac MS. has been lately identified by Prof. Gwynn. It contains, besides a treatise of Ephraim Syrus, those parts of the New Testament which are not found in the Peshitto or Syriac Vulgate; and Dr. Gwynn has demonstrated that it is the actual MS. referred to by De Dieu and Walton as belonging to Ussher, and usually described erroneously as containing the whole New Testament. This is the MS. from which De Dieu, and subsequently Walton, printed the Pericopa de Adultera.[132]

To come to printed books. We have but one example of a block book—the Ars Moriendi—and that imperfect. So far as it goes, it agrees with the British Museum copy published by Mr. Rylands. We have a copy of the first German Bible [1466]; a single leaf (on vellum) of the famous Mazarin Bible; and a copy of the Latin Bible printed at Cologne by Nic. Goetz de Schletzstadt [1474].

The Quin collection includes the first edition of Petrarch: Sonetti e Trionfi (1470); the first of the Divina Commedia (1472), and the first of Boccaccio’s Theseide (1475), very rare; also a splendid copy, on vellum, of the second edition of Virgil (Venice: Vindelin de Spira, 1470); also, Ystoria de re Karlo Imperatore (1473), exceedingly rare; the only known vellum Elsevir (Heinsius: De Contemptu Mortis, 1621); Dita Mundi, by Fazio degl’ Uberti; and the Adventures of Tewerdanck, on vellum (Nuremberg, 1517), a magnificent specimen of printing. In the Fagel Library is an extremely fine Latin Plutarch, also on vellum (Jenson, 1478). We have only one Caxton: Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers (1477); unless we reckon a single leaf (an Indulgence), which Mr. Bradshaw considered to be from Caxton’s press.

Amongst rare books may be enumerated—a Sarum Horae (Paris: Poitevin, about 1498, unique); a Sarum Breviary (Paris: Levet. 1494, unique), which seems to have been in early times mistaken for a manuscript, and is consequently kept and catalogued among the MSS. We have a copy of Werner Rolevinck’s Fasciculus Temporum in Dutch, printed at Utrecht by Veldener, 1480—one of the earliest books with woodcuts in the text (coloured).

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A book of some interest exhibited in the glass case is Theseus Ambrosius: Introductio in Chaldaicam Linguam (1539). It is of interest as being the first book in which Syriac types were used, and next as containing a specimen of spirit-writing dating from the sixteenth century. It seems that a question having arisen about some property of a deceased lady which was supposed to be concealed, it was resolved to evoke a demon to answer the question. A sheet of paper and a pen were placed on the table, and the proper incantation being gone through, the pen rose up, without anyone seeing the hand that held it, and wrote the characters of which Ambrosius gives a fac-simile, and which, unfortunately, no one has been able to decipher. I am informed that in the copy of this book in the Bodleian Library this particular leaf is pasted down, the “devil’s autograph,” no doubt, being deemed uncanny.

But to enumerate our rare books, or even our fifteenth-century books, would be tedious, if it were possible. I must not, however, omit to refer to some fine specimens of binding, most of which are in the Quin collection. We have six of Grolier’s books[133]—namely, Erasmus: Pacis Querella; Palladius: Coryciana; Greek Psalter (Aldus); Il Nuovo Cortegiano; Cynthio degli Fabritii; Della Origine delli Volgari Proverbi; and (perhaps the finest) Guilelmus Tyrius: Belli Sacri Historia (folio). Of Maioli we have—Ori Apollinis de Sacris Notis et Sculpturis, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius; one by Monnier—Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante; and last, but not least, a copy of Quintus Calaber, which belonged to Henry II. of France and Diane de Poitiers.

There are in the Library a few interesting objects other than books which deserve notice. The satchel of the Book of Armagh, and the shrines of the Books of Dimma and Mulling, have been already noticed. A very remarkable object is a Mosque Staff, presented by Dr. Jolliffe Tufnell, who professionally attended Omar Pasha’s army in 1854. Such a staff is used where there are no mosques, and being set up on a temporary structure, as a heap of stones, it represents a mosque. On each of the four sides is carved a sentence from the Koran. “I am in the house of the Lord.” “Evil and good are sent by God; be content with your lot.” “Every day we offer our prayers to Thee.” “Forgive us all our sins.” “With heart and soul we believe in Thee.”

An ancient Irish harp attracts the attention of visitors from the repute attaching to it, of being the harp of Brian Boroimhe (pron. Boru, d. 1014). It is elegantly carved, and in form much resembles the harp of Queen Mary, an engraving of which is exhibited beside[172] it. It had thirty strings. The following is the tradition respecting this harp, as quoted in the Ulster Journal of Archæology, vol. vii., p. 99, from a MS. by Ralph Ouseley, 1783.[134] “It had been taken to Rome, and remained there until Innocent XI. sent it as a token of good will to Charles II., who deposited it in the Tower. Soon afterwards, the Earl of Clanricarde, seeing it, assured the King that he knew an Irish nobleman (meaning O’Brien, Earl of Thomond) who would probably give a limb of his estate for this relic of his great ancestor; on which his Majesty made him a present of it. Lord Clanricarde brought the instrument to Ireland; but Lord Thomond, being abroad, never became possessed of it. Some years after, a Lady Henley purchased it by barter, in exchange for twenty rams and as many ewes of English breed, in order to give it to her son-in-law, Henry M‘Mahon, Esq., of Clunagh, County Clare; from whom it passed through other hands to an accomplished gentleman, the Right Hon. William Conyngham,” who presented it to Trinity College. Conyngham seems to have been given the harp by Chevalier O’Gorman, who gave a history of it (published in Vallancey’s Collectanea, vol. iv. 7) differing from that just quoted. According to O’Gorman’s story, Brian’s son Donogh, on being deposed, took the harp (with the crown and regalia) to Rome, and gave them to the Pope.[135] He adds the fiction that it was on the ground of possessing these regalia that Pope Adrian claimed the right to dispose of the lordship of Ireland. The story goes on to say that a later Pope gave the harp to Henry VIII., who presented it to the first Earl of Clanricarde.[136] The celebrated antiquary, Dr. George Petrie, considered that our harp dated from about A.D. 1400, and was a portable instrument used for ecclesiastical purposes. One strong objection to the earlier date he based on the fact that it bore a silver badge with the arms of O’Neill, armorial bearings not having been in use much earlier than the date he assigned. This badge disappeared for some time, and fortunately came into the possession of a distinguished antiquary, Mr. Robert Day, of Cork, affixed to a piece of armour found in some recent excavations in the Phœnix Park. As soon as Mr. Day learned the history of the badge, he promptly presented it to the Library. In its absence it was easy to observe that the carving was[173] continuous, so that the badge must have been a later addition. Petrie’s first argument, therefore, fell to the ground. It is true, however, that the figures of two wolf-dogs are carved on the harp itself. His second objection was founded on the occurrence of the letters IHC, which may be traced in a peculiar angular form near the top of the front arm. But this also, in the opinion of good judges, is later than the rest of the carving. The harp, therefore, may possibly be older than Petrie’s date. The sound-board is of oak (as ascertained by microscopical examination), but very much decayed.

The same case which contains the harp contains also a few gold and silver ornaments of elegant workmanship, and a large spear brooch, which, however, has none of the characteristic Irish work, and is in fact very similar to a Scandinavian brooch figured in M. Du Chaillu’s Viking Age, vol. ii., p. 329, but has more ornament. It is 13¾ in. long, 5½ wide across the circle, and weighs 18 oz. It is figured in Vallancey’s Collectanea, vol. i., where it is stated that it had recently (1786) been found near Cashel.

In the Librarian’s room is the largest of the gold ornaments yet found in Ireland. It is in form like the small fibulae, but weighs 33 oz. 4 dwt. It is adorned with groups of concentric circles and a series of acute angles, with no trace of the spirals so characteristic of Celtic art in Christian times. From this it is inferred that it is of older date. This ornament was found at Clones in 1820, and purchased by the College. The Charter horn of the Kavanaghs, after being in the Library for a century, was a few years ago surrendered to the family. A cast of it is exhibited.

A small bas-relief which hangs on one of the pillars calls for some notice. It represents Demosthenes at the altar of Calaureia, where he took the fatal poison. The whole posture, but especially the head, expresses the utmost dejection. The position of the right hand also should be observed; instead of clasping the knee, it hangs idly on one side. There is an engraving of this work in Winckelmann’s History of Art, but the engraver, by raising the chin, has quite lost the aspect of dejection, and rather gives the impression that the orator is meditating a speech. It is also engraved in Allen’s Demosthenes and in Stock’s Demosthenes. This relief belonged to Dr. Richard Mead, and is said to have been found in the ruins of Hadrian’s Villa. After Mead’s sale in 1755, where it was purchased by a London dealer, it disappeared from view until about 1885, when I had the good fortune to identify it in the centre ornament of a mantelpiece in the room which formerly contained the Museum (now the Front Hall), and which was built in 1759. Certain errors in the arrangement of the drapery have suggested doubts as to its[174] genuineness.[137] On the other hand, in its favour is the fact that the features resemble those of the bust found in Herculaneum in 1753; but it was known in 1737, before the discovery of that bust, and at a time when a wholly different type of face was accepted as that of Demosthenes. Possibly even ancient artists may have erred sometimes.

Another objection is the misspelling of the name—viz., ΔΗΜΩΣΘΕΝΗΣ. But would not a modern sculptor, who would presumably be too ignorant of Greek to substitute Ω for Ο, be less likely to commit this error than a Roman sculptor of Hadrian’s time, who would probably know a little Greek?

Just inside the entrance to the building are two Medallion Busts which were brought from Smyrna in 1707. They are mentioned by Gudius and Boeckh.[138] They were made the subject of a learned dissertation by Dr. Kennedy Bailie (Transactions, Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxii.). He concludes that the larger medallion represents Plautilla, wife of Caracella, deified under the title ΝΕΑ ἩΡΑ, but afterwards deposed and banished.

Our collection of Coins is not very large. Of Roman coins, silver and copper, we have a fairly good collection—about 1,300 silver and a couple of thousand copper. A selection of these is exhibited. The collection ought to be better, but unfortunately, about a hundred years ago (viz., in 1788), the room where the coins were then kept (now the Fagel) was burglariously entered, and the most valuable coins and medals stolen. Recently, the late Rev. Dr. R. F. Littledale bequeathed a small collection of English coins and medals.

An old Minute Book of the Library, chiefly in the handwriting of Dr. Barrett, contains occasional items of interest. Here we read of a ship with books for the Library cast away, the books, however, being recovered, but damaged, some irrecoverably. Again, we find some books which had been stolen restored through the Roman Catholic priest to whom the thief had made confession. On another occasion a parcel of stolen books is thrown into the Provost’s courtyard. An amusing entry occurs, in which Dr. Barrett states his intention to ask permission to lock up a certain Narrative of a Residence in Ireland, by Mrs. Anne. Plumptre (1815), stating that it is too silly and too ill-mannered for a public library. “Hospitably entertained by the good-natured, blundering Irish, and introduced[175] (perhaps for the first time in her life) into good company, she takes care to let [the] world know it by publishing all the little tea-table talk they had indulged in to amuse her, and many of whom are probably now blushing at seeing it embodied in a pompous quarto, illustrated with engravings. Travel in savage countries, Mrs. Anne, and publish their conversations if you can, but spare the feelings of those who are accustomed to the rules and decencies of civilised life.”

An account of the Library would be incomplete if the Catalogue were left unnoticed. The first printed Catalogue was issued about 1710 in one thin volume, folio. We have now a printed Catalogue in nine folio volumes, which includes all the printed books in the Library at the end of the year 1872. The first volume of this Catalogue (A and B) was prepared under the direction of Dr. Todd, and issued in 1864. The work was then suspended, and not resumed until 1872, when a special editor, Mr. H. Dix. Hutton, was appointed, the time of the Library staff being fully employed otherwise. The Catalogue was completed Jan. 1, 1887, the expense of printing and paper alone having been £4,500. Since that time Mr. Hutton has been engaged in preparing a Supplementary Catalogue, to contain the subsequent accessions. When this has been completed up to the present time, it is intended to make it a Desk Catalogue, in which all new accessions will be inserted on printed slips. The Catalogue is primarily an author’s catalogue—that is to say, books are arranged under the names of their authors, where known. But by the liberal use of cross references and secondary entries, some of the advantages of a subject catalogue are obtained. In the Desk Catalogue now in preparation, the method adopted by the editor, Mr. Hutton, is as follows:—One copy of the printed slip is taken, and in the upper left-hand corner the proper subject heading is type-written by him, and this slip is then inserted in alphabetical order, according to this heading. This saves the expense of printing a fresh title for the secondary entry.

Of our MSS. the earliest existing catalogue is that of 1688, which was compiled with great care. This is also the only catalogue at present accessible to readers at a distance, having been printed in Bernard’s Catalogus Manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ. In the Library itself the catalogue most commonly used is one drawn up by Dr. John Lyon about 1745, which, however, only extends to Classis G. A more complete catalogue, extending to Classis M, was prepared by Dr. Henry J. Monck Mason, about the year 1814, for the Irish Commissioners of Public Records, with a view to publication. The terms proposed by Dr. Monck Mason and his specimen of the work were approved, and when the[176] rough copy (in five volumes) was finished he was required to hand it over to the Board. Then the question of remuneration was raised, and it was discovered that no minute had been entered of the original engagement; and as some of the members of the Board had been changed, the engagement, in the absence of a written vote, was not held to be sufficient to outweigh considerations of public economy.

Dr. Monck Mason devoted much conscientious labour and intelligence to the work. He was assisted in the department of Irish MSS. by Edward O’Reilly; in that of Oriental MSS. by Edward Hincks, then sub-librarian; and in the Icelandic MSS. by George Cash. It is much to be lamented that the work was not published as designed. The MSS. in the Irish language have been catalogued by Dr. O’Donovan in one thick folio volume. There exists also a card catalogue, consisting of about 20,000 cards, prepared under the direction of Dr. Benjamin Dickson, assistant librarian. He employed, at his own expense, a person acquainted with the Irish vernacular, but otherwise not as well qualified as might be wished (the inevitable result of want of means to pay a qualified scholar).

It is in contemplation to print a summary catalogue much briefer than Dr. Monck Mason’s, but containing sufficient information about each volume to indicate to students at a distance what they may expect to look for in it. A catalogue of this kind need not occupy more than one volume, and might be sold at such a price as would make it generally accessible.

It may interest librarians to learn how the accommodation has been from time to time enlarged. Up to the end of the eighteenth century, the room in the east wing, now occupied by the Fagel Library, was set apart as the MSS. Room. In the stalls in the Long Room, where the short bookcases are at present, there were seats like settles, the ends of which[177] still remain. From the high cases projected sloping desks, below which there were no books. The engraving in Malton’s Views of Dublin represents this state of things. These seats and desks were removed in 1817. The Reading Room was the upper room in the west wing, now the Clerks’ Room. The whole of the ground floor, except in the wings, was an open ambulatory, divided length-wise by a central wall, the south side being used by the Fellows. The rooms on the ground floor in both wings were Lecture Rooms—that at the west for Law, that at the east end for Divinity. The Law Lecture Room also contained the Lending Library. There were no bookcases in the gallery.

Only graduates (of Dublin, Oxford, or Cambridge) have the right of admission to the Library; but the privilege has always been freely granted to persons properly introduced,[180] whether graduates of a university or not, so that it is, in fact, a public library. In 1856 it was resolved by the Board and Visitors to grant admission to students who have entered on their third year, that being the usual period for commencing professional studies; but admission is always granted at an earlier period to a student whose studies are such as to make it desirable.

Previously to 1843, readers were allowed to take books from the shelves themselves, but in that year this privilege was limited to the Fellows and Professors, except in the Reading Room, where books of reference and other books in frequent demand are accessible to all readers. This change caused a considerable diminution in the number of readers. A similar resolution had been passed in 1817, but rescinded a few months after, it being thought to be contrary to the Statutes, which forbade readers to replace a book anywhere except in its place on the shelves. The Provost (Elrington) protested against the rescission, alleging, inter alia, that free access to the shelves led to the reading of indecent books, and he had even known books of magic to be read.

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The hours during which the Library was open were formerly eight to ten, and eleven to one. We read once or twice of permission being given to readers to remain locked in between ten and eleven. The hour of closing was afterwards postponed to two o’clock. At present, the Reading Room is open from ten to six; the Library itself is closed at three in winter, and four in summer.